Sword of Redemption
by ladycordelia17
Summary: When the fight between Mio and Raem reaches the mortal realm, can Aeris, a Clavat whom Raem has gravely wounded, break the seal surrounding the "fallen sword" atop fiery Mount Kilanda before all is lost? Rated M for later chapters.
1. A Battle and a Discovery

**_A crossover between _Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles_ and another _Final Fantasy _game that will become apparent at the end of this first chapter. The caravan from Tipa has come to Mount Kilanda in search of myrrh--and there they discover that a myrrh tree isn't the only thing that the Iron Giant guards there._**

_Disclaimer: I own only my own Tipa caravanners and the plot as it occurs in the setting of the story; Square Enix owns the rest. No money is made off this fic._

**The Discovery**

Far across the sea to the south of the tiny village of Tipa lay the inferno known as Mount Kilanda. There, at the summit of the volcano, the great Iron Giant raised his oversized sword threateningly, glaring with flame-red eyes at the approach of five crystal caravanners. One of the challengers, a green-eyed Lilty, raised his lance in the air in contemptuous mimicry of the giant—to which the giant swung his sword at the caravanners, releasing a powerful blast.

Thankfully the caravanners managed to dodge the attack—all except a Clavat maiden in a blackened tunic who caught the blow on her shield. The blast knocked her down and wrested a thin-bladed sword from her hand, though it luckily sent the sword through the chest of a nearby goblin. The green-eyed Lilty seized the sword and quickly used it to dispatch another goblin that might have cast a spell on one or more of the caravanners. He had then just managed to hand the sword back to its Clavatian wielder as she scrambled out of the way of the Iron Giant's vicious sword-chop. The giant's sword shattered, spraying the caravanners with shrapnel.

"He's unarmed now!" shouted a Yukish woman in spite of the new dent in her soot-stained helm. "David, you and Dimo Nor distract him! Lydia, give me your magic!"

As if on cue, the Yuke and the Clavat woman prepared their spells while the two men—the Lilty, Dimo Nor, and another Clavat with messy blond hair who had to have been David—struck at the Iron Giant with their weapons, while a Selkie maiden rushed about in a tenacious effort to keep everyone inside the aura of the crystal myrrh-chalice.

"Blizzaga!" the spellcasters shouted in unison.

The spell's effect was immediate: the Iron Giant, about to pound David into the ground, flinched sharply as the cold blast struck. On a burst of quick wit, the Selkie then dropped the chalice and instead seized an urn full of water. She tossed this squarely between the giant's legs into a nearby mini-volcano at the edge of the clearing.

"Nice aim, Anaїs Nin," remarked Dimo Nor as the resulting heat-blast shocked the Iron Giant even worse than the Blizzaga spell, the giant's body blocking the blast from scalding the caravanners. But his compliment fell on deaf ears as Anaїs Nin grabbed the chalice again and ran off to one side of the clearing. The others followed not a moment too soon, for the Iron Giant recovered and sprinted to where lay another sword.

"Khetala, behind you!" Anaїs Nin shrieked in warning as the Iron Giant made another sword swipe immediately upon reentering the battleground. Sensing the danger, the Yuke woman bent forward slightly and appeared to vanish—the result being that the Iron Giant's sword and the power-blast passed harmlessly over where she stood. Khetala rematerialized just in time to freeze a third goblin in place with a Blizzard spell as it spawned, killing it with a crushing hammer strike. David easily dispatched the other new-spawned goblin before following Anaїs Nin's lead and tossing a water-filled urn into a mini-volcano intending to burn the Iron Giant again. His timing, however, was less than perfect: a sharp outcry of pain from Dimo Nor told everyone that he too had been burned by the heat blast. Angry blisters started sprouting up on the Lilty's face and neck instantly, and almost certainly on other parts of his body that his armor covered.

Throwing the crystal chalice to Khetala, Anaїs Nin made a daring move as the Iron Giant tried to chop her with the blow that shattered his second sword: she leapt onto his forearm and, using her racket as a pivot-point, somersaulted onto the giant's shoulder. She boxed the giant's ear with her racket several times in a desperate attempt to create a diversion so that Lydia could heal Dimo Nor with a Cure spell.

But no sooner had the spell healed the Lilty of his burns than the Iron Giant gave up trying to pound Khetala and David. He did not reach up to pluck Anaїs Nin off his ear as one might pull an insect away by one wing, however. Instead, he sprinted away from the clearing to where lay his last sword—which meant dragging the Selkie well out of the chalice's aura, for in her position it was far better to hang on than to try to jump clear. The other caravanners could only watch in horrified awe as the Iron Giant jumped out of the clearing to retrieve the last sword, with Anaїs Nin struggling to hang on.

David and Lydia had just finished killing the fifth and sixth goblin lackeys when the Iron Giant jumped back into the clearing, sword in hand, and the shock of his landing shook Anaїs Nin off his shoulder. Whether it was the fall, or whether the Selkie had already succumbed to miasma poisoning, was of little difference when she fell down dangerously close to a mini-volcano and did not move. Dimo Nor tossed the chalice to Lydia so that he and David could renew their attacks on the Iron Giant as far away as the boundary of the crystalline aura would allow. With Lydia carrying the chalice and the two men doing their best to attack the Iron Giant, Khetala wasted no time in getting to the ominously still figure that was Anaїs Nin.

_By all the good in this world, __**please**__ don't let her be dead,_ Khetala thought desperately. This was not the first time the Yuke woman feared precisely this moment. Ever since the day that Anaїs Nin lost her heart in Conall Curach, Khetala feared every battle to be the one that claimed her life, for if she died, Khetala would not have had the heart or the willpower to revive her by magical means.

Had Khetala not been a Yuke, she might have wept with relief to press two fingers to the Selkie's neck and feel the pulse beneath her skin. Anaїs Nin was still alive. Barely. Her breathing was slow and shallow, and bruises were visible where the fall had clearly broken a few ribs. She might have also broken part of her shoulder when she fell, Khetala silently suspected, judging by the odd outward angle of Anaїs Nin's left arm.

"Is she alive?" Lydia demanded to know in a panicked voice as she produced her Cure magicite. Behind her, there was another dangerous spray of shrapnel as the Iron Giant landed his chop squarely between David and Dimo Nor. The very moment Khetala's vigorous head-nod answered Lydia's question, the Clavat immediately replied, "I'll need your help getting her back."

"Curaga!" Lydia and Khetala cried out together, feeling the wave of healing energy wash over them, healing their bruises and scratches and renewing their strength. Finally Anaїs Nin too was healed of her broken bones and her miasma poisoning, so that she was able to stand again. No sooner had she eked out a thank-you to the spellcasters, however, than the Iron Giant, struck down by a final spear-thrust from Dimo Nor, fell dead with a mighty crash mere feet away from her and Khetala.

"It's over," David panted as he scooped up the crystal chalice. "We can get our myrrh and leave this infernal place."

The caravanners followed David, with Anaїs Nin still feeling light-headed and needing to lean rather heavily on her racket as she walked, into the smallish cavern that the Iron Giant had been guarding, where lay the myrrh tree. As Lydia gave thanks to the powers of good for their victory, David set the chalice down on the stone pedestal under the myrrh tree's lower fronds. A heady feeling of peace washed over all five of the caravanners as the familiar blue glow emanated from the tree, from the trunk and branches to the upper fronds to the point where met two lower fronds. The tree remained luminous for several seconds before the drop of myrrh fell, bathing the fragment of crystal and settling splashlessly into the chalice.

The caravanners lingered for several moments after the drop of myrrh fell, but just as they were about to turn away and leave the cave, a glint of something metallic caught Lydia's eye. "What's that?" she thought aloud, hastening toward the object that lay a short distance behind the myrrh tree.

"Lydia, wait! Anaїs Nin's hurt, remember?" Khetala admonished. Even so, the curiosity of the caravanners was piqued as they followed Lydia. She led them to the thing that had caught her attention: it appeared to be a sword, permanently embedded almost to its hilt in the rock.

"Would you look at that?" Dimo Nor laughed in spite of himself. "A sword in the stone, just like in that old fairy-tale."

"This is no ordinary sword," answered Lydia. "It's not iron, not mythril, not even orichalcum—what do you suppose it could be?"

Dimo Nor shook his head. "It's not as if we'd ever find out—we certainly can't pull it out of the rock," he snorted derisively.

David, however, set the chalice down as he knelt to examine the partially buried sword. He brushed away a spot of soot and dirt from just below the hilt to reveal a short series of runes engraved there. The name spelt out in the runes, however, took him completely by surprise.

"It's the _Masamune_," the blond Clavat reverently breathed.


	2. Legend of the Fallen Angel

**_A/N:_** _Maybe I wasn't specific enough when David uttered the name of the artifact__; from what the Final Fantasy Wikia says, the Masamune has been featured in nearly all of the _Final Fantasy _titles in one way or another (in _Crystal Chronicles_, it's a strength-boosting artifact (+5) obtainable only through diligent artifact-hunting on Mount Kilanda on or after Cycle 3 of the myrrh tree). For the legend that my Tipa caravanners are about to discuss, I draw upon what is probably the most famous bit of _Final Fantasy_ story to come to mind when the Masamune is mentioned._

**Legend of the Fallen Angel**

"What did you say?" asked the dazed Anaїs Nin in surprise.

"The Masamune," David repeated, at last turning his gaze away from the great sword buried in the rock and back to his fellow caravanners. "The sword of the angel who fell from the Lady Mio's grace."

Lydia shook her head in disbelief. "But that story's supposed to be just a legend."

"The sword is real enough," David asserted in a tone that would brook no opposition, "therefore, the legend behind it must also, in fact, be truth."

"I never heard the story," Dimo Nor admitted.

Usually it was Khetala who alluded to old lore when explaining things to the caravan, but here she took a place with Lydia, Dimo Nor, and Anaїs Nin so that David could tell the story. On this cue, David began to recall a story that he had learned when he was new to the crystal caravan:

"Thousands of years ago, maybe four thousand or more, our four races were discovering magicite and how it enables us to cast spells," David explained. "We knew of Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder magicites and their capacities in the hands of spellcasters, and we were beginning to learn of the magicites that cast Cure and Clear to heal the ills that befall us. But these were not all to be had where spellcasting went, for there was a sixth form of magicite."

"The Life magicite, obviously," answered Dimo Nor.

"Yes, the Life magicite," David continued, "and the very first user of this Life magicite was a Clavat maiden barely of age—her name was Aeris of Rebena, in the time when Rebena Te Ra was more prosperous even than Alfitaria. She cast a Life spell to revive her elder sister Ayla, whose cause of death was unknown—some say Ayla had died in childbirth, others say pneumonia. But whatever the truth was, Aeris cast the spell that brought her sister back to life." He paused briefly before continuing: "This action drew down on Aeris the anger of an angel who served the Lady Mio, Queen of Memories. Certain in the conviction that no mortal should be allowed to have power over the dead, this angel leapt down to Rebena and ran Aeris through with his sword. The Lady Mio, furious in her turn at the murdering angel, imprisoned him inside his own sword, threw the sword into the fiery pit we know today as Mount Kilanda, and blinked the angel's name out of all living memory."

"Little did this fallen angel know that the Lady Mio must have intended us to know the Life magicite and its power, for when the miasma swallowed the world, it brought with it ghosts, wraiths, nightmares, and many another foul undead creature vanquishable only by Holy magic," added Khetala, "and we need Life magicite to cast Holy."

David nodded. "Aye," he answered, "but ordinarily this story itself is just meant to be a warning to the aggressive. Lady Mio has no mercy for murderers, they say, that's why one must never take the life of any Clavat, Lilty, Selkie, or Yuke in this world."

"Blinked the fallen angel's name out of all living memory as part of his punishment," Dimo Nor repeated with a hint of derisiveness in his voice. "Convenient. I think it's just an excuse for people who don't remember."

"I've read about the legends that surround this place," added Anaїs Nin at last. "I've told everyone about the legend of Dominic and Ardwynna once already—when the warrior Dominic, Lilty lover of the angel Ardwynna, died in battle, Ardwynna took his body here to Kilanda and mourned him for two hundred and fifty days. Then the good Queen of Memories took pity on her and returned Dominic to her side in the form of a phoenix, so that they would never be parted again. In her gratitude, Ardwynna caused a myrrh tree to grow on Kilanda against the coming of the Dark Age that we now live in. Things of great evil spring up, they say, when great weapons become stained with innocent blood…"

"And because this sword, the Masamune, had the blood of Aeris of Rebena on it when Mio cast it away in this direction, and still bears that bad memory—that must be why the Iron Giant serves the demon Raem, guarding the myrrh tree against crystal caravanners who seek only to protect their villages," David finished for her. "There's always a legend behind the myrrh tree's presence, and there's always a reason, according to other legends, why a great foul beast opposes caravanners at every turn.

Khetala tapped a foot somewhat impatiently. "We should leave," she stated matter-of-factly. "The ferryman is waiting for us on the shore."

* * *


	3. Has She No Guardian?

_**A/N:** This is where the rating of my story changes from T to M, for a deeply disturbing memory haunting a character I am about to introduce. Normally I wouldn't let anything of the sort happen to any character in one of my stories (and besides which, nobody with half a heart in the other_ Final Fantasy _fandom would let it happen to her namesake). But I needed something painful enough that, if kept fresh in the mind of a mortal in the realm of _Crystal Chronicles_, would give **Raem** enough power to revive even a destroyed Meteor Parasite were he to extract the memory from the mortal burdened with it. That issue of such a painful memory will come into play later on._

**Has She No Guardian?**

_A hood thrown over her head and tied tightly about her neck, a rough rope that bound her hands together once her (three?) attackers had twisted her arms behind her back…_

_savage masculine laughter ringing in her ears as she struggled and cried until one of them clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle the sound…the breath knocked out of her as the attackers threw her over on her front…_

_the sound of fabric being torn apart and the chill of the air on her exposed skin a moment before multiple pairs of clammy, grimy demon-like hands roamed all over her body…_

_being rolled over onto her back, crushing her bound hands and wrists; one of the men tying one of her ankles to what must have been a tree root as another did the same to her other ankle, a sickening dread filling her of what her attackers intended to do next…_

It had been seven years since all of this had happened to Aeris of Marr's Pass, and still the Clavat innkeeper's daughter woke a third of her not-yet-dawns crying out in fear. This time, however, she now heard a sharp knocking on her bedroom door that terrified her almost as much as the ghastly memories that still haunted her dreams. _Oh, no! What if I've disturbed a guest by screaming? What will Father say? _she thought in her panic.

"Are you all right?" asked a vaguely familiar but concerned-sounding female voice. It _was_ one of the guests, maybe one of the women from the Tipa caravan that was staying at the Spruce Tree Inn for a few days. Quivering in fear, Aeris picked up her candle and forced herself to answer the knock.

The form of the tall, mauve-robed and mythril-helmeted Yukish woman from the Tipa caravan was the figure that now towered over Aeris. "Oh—your n-name's—Khetala—isn't it? I-I'm so sorry if I d-disturbed you…" Aeris stammered, pale as a ghost and trembling like a shriveled leaf in autumn wind. Hopefully the Yuke wouldn't be too angry over the disturbance.

Far from angry, however, Khetala knew that something must have been terribly wrong to make the girl shake and stammer the way she did, her emerald eyes wide and horrified. "You must be Aeris, the innkeeper Winston's daughter," said the Yukish woman in a soothing tone. "Did some nightmare make you scream as you did a moment ago? It sounded as though you were being attacked."

Aeris retreated into the room again with a startled gasp as though about to hide under her bed like a frightened child before she could steel herself to try and face Khetala with something resembling calm. "I-I still remember, it still gives me nightmares—three men attacked me—seven years ago, I was fifteen at the time…" she tried to say, unable to keep her scared and ashamed voice from shaking.

"Three men attacked you?" Khetala repeated in shock even as she continued to study the frightened young Clavat woman from behind her sallet. She had heard before of rare but horrifying monsters that assumed the form of men, sent by the demon Raem to accost women unlucky enough to be alone and unprepared for attack, who sought to defile any victim they could find. Clavats called such a beast "the shatterer of shields," Selkies knew him as "the worst brand of thief," and Lilties named this monster "the twisted spearman" when these attackers took their respective forms, but Yukes had no such moniker for the demon-spawn, probably because he was never known to assume a Yukish man's form. Most victims of such attacks were Clavat women, but race hardly mattered, for even if the attacker did not force his victim to give birth to a demon-child months after the attack happened, the victim was always deeply scarred with painful memories from which she could never be foreseen to recover. Khetala could not assume, but judging by the behavior of the frightened Clavat, it appeared that Aeris of Marr's Pass had indeed been a victim of attack by three such monsters. "Tell me what happened; you have my word that I will never repeat it to another mortal," the Yuke gently bade, closing the door and following Aeris back to sit next to her on the edge of her bed.

"Like I said, I was fifteen at the time," Aeris began to explain. "There was a fever that broke out in mid-spring, and two rooms in the eastern wing became a kind of infirmary. I wasn't expecting any trouble when I went out at night to fetch water from the well—that's when they grabbed me. Someone threw a bag onto my head, tying it there so I would never see their faces— and they tied my hands behind me, and covered my mouth so I couldn't cry for help. One of them had a piece of crystal; I don't know how far out of the town they took me before they threw me on the ground and tied my legs to some tree roots…"

"You needn't say anymore of what they did," Khetala told Aeris soothingly. "How long did your captors have you, and did they then return you to the edge of the town, or were you rescued?"

Aeris searched her memory. "It couldn't have been more than three days," she answered at last, "before a caravan heard me crying out. There was commotion; my captors tried to flee and leave me in the miasma to die, but the caravanners—it was our own Marr's Pass caravan—harpooned them all. Then I felt my bonds being severed, and one of them was covering me with a blanket because my captors had torn up and destroyed my clothes. I hadn't seen their faces until the caravanners killed them all—two Clavats and a Selkie, all of them even uglier than I had imagined they'd be. It was so humiliating when the caravan took me home, the way the brown-eyed one, Lyne Dott, yelled so much about the men who'd, well, shattered my shield—the whole town knew I'd been defiled…"

"Was there nobody in town who showed you any sympathy?" asked Khetala, clearly distressed on Aeris's behalf.

"There was the healer Lucinda, who's now my stepmother—she'd always been kind to me, and never blamed me for what happened, nor did my father—but they were the only ones for the longest time," said Aeris with a desolate look at Khetala. "They all shunned me—some of them called me a harlot, and the inn lost a lot of its customers for the next year or so; they didn't want one as cursed as me waiting on them."

Khetala now looked away out the window at the crystal that protected Marr's Pass from the miasma, not knowing whether to clench her hand into a fist or to lay it on Aeris's shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. _Has this Clavat girl no guardian, no being of the heavens to protect her?_ Khetala thought in both anger and despair. _No celestial guardian would have allowed such an evil fate to befall any under the good Mio's care!_

"I'm sorry," Aeris murmured, now staring at her hands in her lap. "I never would've mentioned a word of it…"

"Only that such a painful memory still haunts your dreams and wakes you before your dawns on nights like this one," Khetala finished. "The ghosts of the past still torment you after all seven of those years."

That night, Khetala made her way, as she had been wont to do many times before, to the great crystal in the center of the mountain crossroads-town. Focusing her will on the memory of the early morning's conversation with young Aeris, the Yuke woman pressed both hands to the smooth surface of the crystal.

"Has the Clavat no guardian?" she silently cried out to the heavens once more. "Has she no deliverance from the torment that still haunts her? No help in fighting the devils that plague her memory and riddle her soul with nightmares? Dear Lady Mio, dear angels above, show me some way to help her! Show me some way that she can be free of these ghosts of the past!"

Serene blues and lush tones of green swirled around Khetala's senses as a voice filled her ears, a low, soothing male voice that spoke to her in answer: _"Only moments away, the time will come for the Clavat without a guardian to sheathe her fears and steel her courage, that she who alone remembers the fallen may release one unforgiven from his prison in the hell-fire, for no golden dawn may rise until the fallen fights for redemption."_

An image of Mount Kilanda flashed in Khetala's mind as she drew her hands away from the crystal. That infernal mountain was somehow important to the answer to the Yuke woman's prayer. Did it mean that Aeris had to go there? Khetala thought back to her caravan's recent visit in quest of myrrh, and to how David had told a story of how an almost-buried sword came to be there beside the myrrh tree…

The "Clavat without a guardian…" the buried sword at Mount Kilanda…how _no golden dawn may rise until the fallen fights for redemption_…the name of the first Life spellcaster of legend…did it all mean that Aeris's fate was somehow tied to the Great Revival of prophecy? It was too much for Khetala to make sense of at once. She knew one thing for certain, however: the powers of good in this world needed the nameless fallen angel on its side against the demon Raem, and Aeris of Marr's Pass was the only mortal in the world who could help him fight for his redemption.


	4. Only Moments Away, part I

_**A/N:** For this chapter I borrow a couple of ideas from my fellow writer The Trinity Tree. First, the use of the name "Imuardian" for an angel in Lady Mio's service whose form is that of a Yuke; The Trinity Tree originally used that name for a caravanner from the Yuke citadel of Shella. Second, the angels in their forms as Lady Mio addresses them may be reminiscent of a chapter in my fellow writer's story **Tales of Trinity** titled "Three and One Apart." Observe carefully to see the connection. I also borrow a penname from a writer in the fandom from whence I draw the crossover, an apt one considering the "shipping" bent in one of this authoress's better handiwork._

**

* * *

**

Only Moments Away, part I: Nest of Memories

"I have again heard the prayer of Khetala of Tipa," quietly spoke a figure robed in a brilliant myrrh-like blue hue, a figure that bore the batlike wings and large furred hands of a Yukish man. Unlike a Yuke in the mortal realm, however, the figure bore a blue turban whose end draped over his face like a veil, revealing only his glowing blue-green eyes, instead of a helm. "She cried out a plea to deliver the Clavat without a guardian, Aeris of Marr's Pass, from the tormentors that haunt her still. It disturbs me deeply, Your Grace, to know that three of the very worst of Raem's servants remain able to torment their victim and are so active in doing as they do, as I suspect that the demon intends to use Aeris's pain to increase his power." The figure standing beside him, clearly an angel who assumed a Clavat woman's form save for ivory-feathered wings, with sinuous waves of mahogany hair and glowing myrrh-blue eyes, robed in snowy white cloth, remained silent and apparently sorrowful.

"I understand your concern, Imuardian," answered the ethereal voice of a glowing woman who might have been taken for a Clavat or Selkie in the mortal realm were her features clear—the Lady Mio, Queen of Memories. "Raem has made an attempt to thwart the motley Chosen already: his effort to destroy Anaїs Nin, the Selkie under Ardwynna's care. He has failed; even in her near-death experience at Mount Kilanda Anaїs Nin has not surrendered to her despair. She will be among the chosen five, and they will fulfill their shared destiny and destroy the source of the miasma."

"When Raem ascends to seize hold of Aeris and harvest the painful memory that she carries—and I know that he will if the five Chosen fulfill their destiny," explained Imuardian, "I fear that it may be at a time when we angels are in danger of overlooking her. That danger is already too great, as we know because Raem was able to inflict the pain upon Aeris to begin with."

A third figure appeared in the Nest of Memories: this one bore the appearance of a proud and beautiful Lilty woman in elegant armor the color of gold, her blue-green eyes glowing like Imuardian's and a phoenix perched upon her shoulder. "There is a thing that Your Grace must know, and you must know also, Calliope and Imuardian," stated the Liltian-looking figure. "The motley Chosen have gathered myrrh at Mount Kilanda prior to their coming to Marr's Pass, and there they have realized the truth of the stories that surround it. They have discovered, and know the truth behind the presence of, the fallen sword."

"Ardwynna," Imuardian spoke her name with some surprise but guessed her purpose, "what is it that you suggest?"

"We know for certain that Raem will seek out Aeris of Marr's Pass for the pain that she holds in her memory, as Imuardian has explained," Ardwynna stated, turning her gaze on the angel in question. "It is very true that Raem's power will increase tenfold, perhaps more, should he succeed in taking hold of her." She now lifted her glowing eyes to face the Lady Mio once more with an expression of earnest supplication as she went on, "however, there is one, Your Grace, who could protect Aeris against the demon."

The angel that was called Calliope stared in surprise at Ardwynna. "You speak of the unforgiven, the one who after four thousand years remains imprisoned at Mount Kilanda," said she, doubtful of whether the Lady Mio would approve of Ardwynna's intent or whether it would make a change for the better in the mortal realm.

"Ardwynna is right," said Mio at last, "the time has come. Let it be, then, for Aeris of Marr's Pass to realize the truth of her past life four thousand years ago. Let Aeris be the mortal who releases the unforgiven from his prison in the hell-fire that is Kilanda. He will need only protect Aeris against the minions of Raem until the demon's final destruction, and he will have won my full forgiveness. Speak, Imuardian, to Khetala of Tipa; tell her of what must be done."

"I will do so, Your Grace," answered Imuardian obediently just before he vanished from the Nest of Memories.

"Can we be sure of the fallen one's wish for redemption?" asked Calliope. "Can we be sure that four thousand years of imprisonment will not have embittered him and permanently turned him against all who dwell in the mortal realm?"

To Calliope's worried questions, Mio answered matter-of-factly, "When he knows the terrible truth of what befell Aeris in her present life, he will have reason enough in that alone to wish to destroy Raem."


	5. Only Moments Away, part II

**Only Moments Away, part II: A Glimmer of Recognition**

It was one of those rare times when Mount Kilanda merely fumed in quiet anger instead of violently rumbling and erupting. The coming of the darkness that now covered the world had long ago begun forcing small groups of exceptionally brave mortals (they dubbed their groups "crystal caravans") to travel the world in search of myrrh trees, for the myrrh that they harvested from the trees was apparently what somehow protected settlements against the encroaching darkness, which they dubbed "miasma." On very rare occasion, one of those crystal caravans would approach Mount Kilanda in quest of myrrh. It was rarer still, however, that the volcano was quiet enough that crystal caravanners could safely reach the myrrh tree beyond the monsters stationed there apparently to impede their path (especially the Iron Giant that stood to pound or cleave apart any mortals who approached).

When the crystal caravanners succeeded in defeating the Iron Giant and reaching the myrrh tree, the fallen angel could often hear their voices, for the myrrh tree grew only ten short yards away from the place where he remained imprisoned. It made no difference whether the voices sounded male or female, rough and grating or clear and ringing, strange or familiar; they all made the same remarks. How hellishly hot the volcano was; how arduous the climb to the summit had been; how viciously the monsters had fought to impede them.

_You know nothing of hell if you think that your quest for your drop of myrrh was so very dreadful,_ he thought bitterly whenever he heard the caravanners who whined and grumbled. The summit-cavern in which the myrrh tree grew was protected against flows of lava and hot ash, but it offered no respite from the volcano's violent rumbling to an immortal imprisoned inside a celestial weapon. When Kilanda did erupt, even the cavern became so hot that only the myrrh tree and the fallen angel's sword, in which he remained captive, could survive the heat; anything and everything else became incinerated. _Except the monsters that spawn from this "miasma" that covers the world,_ the angel corrected himself; the monsters adapted to the heat, or else respawned if Kilanda's eruptions burned them. _That_ was hell, and woe betide any mortal who ever made the Lady Mio furious enough to learn of it the hard way, as he had done nearly four thousand years ago when he turned on the Clavat maiden who cast the Life spell, emerald-eyed Aeris of Rebena, and stabbed her with the sword that now served as his prison.

Then a crystal caravan came to Kilanda in quest of myrrh, one that had done the same just shy of five years before. These five caravanners took their myrrh from the tree and left without further parley the first time as nearly five hundred other caravans had done before them, but this second visit turned out radically different.

"_Would you look at that?"_ one of the familiar voices had almost laughed when the sword's presence drew the caravanners' attention. _"A sword in the stone, just like in that old fairy tale!"_

It seemed doubtful that further remarks from the caravanners would go beyond the same young man's derisive comment that nobody would know what the sword was made of, as nobody could uproot it from the rock. The fallen angel was mistaken, however: the first person to touch the sword—a Clavat man, the angel could tell by the feel of fingers on the metal—recognized it somehow.

"_It's the Masamune,"_ he had spoken with a good degree of reverence, as of one only just discovering, as these five caravanners would, that a story long believed to be mere legend was, in fact, history. He was only the second mortal in the world in four thousand years to utter that name in the fallen angel's presence; the first was a member of the very first crystal caravan to come to Mount Kilanda in search of myrrh. That person had to have been a Selkie, and gave the sword its name because it was the closest approximation to the runes just below the sword's hilt; "Masamune" was Old Selkic for "fallen sword" in the mortal realm, which tied in with the legend.

"_The sword of the angel who fell from the Lady Mio's grace."_

"_But that story's supposed to be just a legend."_

"_The sword is real enough; therefore the legend behind it must also, in fact, be truth."_

When one of the caravanners admitted to never having learned of the angel's fall from Mio's grace, the Clavat man told a story of how, four thousand years ago, the four races of mortals experimented with magicite and the spells that it enabled them to cast. He told of how a Clavat, Aeris of Rebena, cast the first Life spell to bring her sister back from the dead. This was the very action that prompted the angel to turn on Aeris and make an example of the retribution for her transgression, for he believed that the Lady Mio, and possibly the angels who serve her, should be the only beings with the power to determine the life or death of mortals. _"Certain in the conviction that no mortal should be allowed to have power over the dead, this angel leapt down to Rebena and ran Aeris through with his sword. The Lady Mio, furious in her turn at the murdering angel, imprisoned him inside his own sword, threw the sword into the fiery pit we know today as Mount Kilanda, and blinked the angel's name out of all living memory."_

Blinked the angel's name out of all living memory. _That might explain why, after __**four thousand years**__, I'm still imprisoned in this hell-fire with no hope of release,_ was the bitter thought that entered the fallen angel's mind at the Clavat man's telling of the story. What needed to happen before someone would release him? The legend of his fall from grace lived on even without a name to become synonymous with his infamy, but mortals knew that to have no name is to be less than a memory. Was that why, as one of the women aboard that caravan said, she thought the story only a legend?

"_Little did this fallen angel know that the Lady Mio must have intended mortals to know the Life magicite and its power,"_ a female voice had spoken in a sad tone that held no reproach, _"for when the miasma swallowed the world it brought with it ghosts, wraiths, nightmares, and many another foul undead creature vanquishable only by Holy magic, and we need Life magicite to cast Holy."_ So their experiments with magicite had led mortals to discover that they could unleash small bursts of divine light, which apparently they needed in order to fight certain monsters that spawned from the miasma. That made excellent sense, the angel had to concede; if some evil had truly taken over the mortal realm so completely as to make monsters as prevalent as these caravanners would have him believe, mortals should at least be able to defend themselves.

After some idle words about the fallen angel's story being a cautionary tale to illustrate that Lady Mio had no mercy for murderers and certain other sinners and a rendition of how a myrrh tree came to grow on Kilanda, another statement by the Clavat who recognized the sword caught the angel's attention. _"And because this sword, the Masamune, had the blood of Aeris of Rebena on it when Mio cast it away, and still bears that bad memory,"_ he had explained, _"that must be why the Iron Giant serves the demon Raem, guarding the myrrh tree against caravanners who seek only to protect their villages."_ These caravanners were the first to reveal that the great evil had a name—Raem. Surely these five mortals knew more about the darkness, about the conflict that now ravaged the mortal realm, than the things of which they spoke.

But they were not the ones to release him from his imprisonment. Either they knew not how, or they simply were not destined to release him—a mortal would have done so if Lady Mio had made it his destiny. Who, then, would release him?

_Maybe it's an omen all the same,_ the angel thought as he pondered the second visit of this caravan. For just a glimmer of recognition, he was grateful to the Clavat man who knew the truth behind the sword's presence at Mount Kilanda. It was only a matter of time, he knew, before his imprisonment was at an end.


	6. Preparations

**Preparations**

Khetala rose early the morning following her prayer at the Marr's Pass crystal, making her way silently from the room where she and her fellow caravanners stayed to the Tipa caravan's wagon in the inn's coach-house. She knew what needed to be done, and if it meant that poor frightened Aeris had to brave Mount Kilanda in search of the fallen sword, the least that Khetala could do was prepare the Clavat for the quest.

The caravan had not yet sold off its unwanted materials gathered from its own venture to Kilanda for a drop of myrrh, so Khetala was fairly certain of finding everything that she needed. She glanced at the piece of parchment detailing plans to forge a shield from iron and magma-rock—excellent; the caravan had both in reserve. But Aeris would need a decently strong weapon to fight the coeurls, lava-mus, and lamias that roamed the volcano, to say nothing of ogres or blazer-beetles, should she encounter any. Tipa's caravanners were always fairly thorough in killing all of the monsters that they saw wherever they sought myrrh, and Kilanda had been no different, but Khetala was unsure of how long it ever took Raem to send minions anywhere to replace those that caravanners killed.

As to a weapon, Khetala came to the conclusion that an ordinary-looking steel blade that had once been Lydia's would suit Aeris nicely. It was plenty strong, but light enough that even an inexperienced fighter could wield it comfortably. The sword did, however, need sharpening before anyone tried to put it to use. Glancing about to see if she missed anything, Khetala gathered the necessary supplies and meandered her way north, to the forge.

"You want me to sharpen a sword and make a shield, eh? A shield of iron and magma-rock? Not plannin' on sendin' someone into peril, I hope," replied the gruff voice of the Clavat blacksmith when Khetala made her request, eyeing the Yuke woman suspiciously.

Khetala sighed inaudibly behind her helm as she produced six one-hundred-gil coins and let them slide from her hand onto the table. "Deliver the shield and sword to a young Clavat woman named Aeris—she would be the innkeeper's daughter, she lives at the Spruce Tree Inn a short walk south—and tell her that Khetala of Tipa makes her a present of them. The time will come when she must use them, and soon."

"Aeris?" the burly old man repeated the name in disbelief. "You'd be sendin' her to the demon 'imself, woman," he darkly warned, "she's cursed; ain't got an angel to protect her. Know how I know? Whole town knows what happened when the fever broke out seven years ago—she went out t'get water for them fever patients—disappeared, she did! Three days later, our caravanners bring her back in nothin' but a blanket, and they sayin' the shield-shatterers…"

"There is no need to tell me more," Khetala interrupted impatiently, moving to add her signature to the parchment bearing the shield plans. "It is the will of the Queen of Memories that Aeris be charged with a…holy quest, for want of a better phrase, and for that I must prepare her by all that lies in my power."

"Then I'll do me best, good madam," the blacksmith conceded at last, although Khetala could tell that he remained suspicious of her.

Satisfied that she had suitably taken care of that part of her task, Khetala delved back into the Tipa caravan's wagon when she returned to the inn. Lighting an oil lamp and settling into a corner with her griffin-feather quill and a long piece of parchment, she began writing detailed instructions for Aeris on how to reach the summit-cavern of Mount Kilanda and the buried sword that lay just behind the myrrh tree. She cudgeled her brain for anything that would help the young Clavat woman, from the location of a small cache of Kilanda magicites to what monsters roamed the mountain and how to defeat them. Khetala wrote of what would hopefully be the best route to follow to the summit and the pitfalls that needed be avoided, detailing what Aeris would need to do should the terrible Iron Giant have respawned and be waiting for her at the summit of the volcano…fervently praying that Aeris would not be forced to face the great monster.

"_Look beyond the myrrh tree to where metal catches the glow," _she wrote, _"and you will know the fallen sword by these runes…"_ and below this instruction Khetala drew the short series of runes that closely approximated the Old Selkic word "_Masamune_," literally "fallen sword." _"If you are whom I believe you to be, then you will know what must be done when you discover the sword that has remained for four thousand years in the hell-fire that is Kilanda."_

Finally finishing the letter that she would leave for Aeris, Khetala rolled the parchment into a tight scroll and searched for something with which to bind it. At length her eyes fell upon a length of pink ribbon. Picking the ribbon up, Khetala suddenly remembered it to be the very length of ribbon that David had mysteriously uncovered in the lost city of Rebena Te Ra almost five years ago. _This ribbon is so old—if the legend of Aeris of Rebena was true, did the ribbon belong to her? _she had wondered then. As realization hit her, she hastily retrieved the caravan's diary and rifled through the pages in search of the ones detailing the visit to Rebena Te Ra and the things that had been foretold there so long ago.

"_When Oblivion washes the world, Darkness will follow, star fallen from Heavens as one who falls from good Mio's grace."_

"_Only when a mortal breaks the seal of Oblivion will the fallen fight for Redemption, reunited with his brethren to lift oppression of Darkness from the mortal realm."_

"_She that breaks the seal of Oblivion then will gain the immortality of the angels and serve good Mio eternally as Redeemer of sinners."_

Then it only fits that I give Aeris the ribbon, Khetala thought as she tied the pink ribbon around the roll of parchment—the Lady Mio must have wanted Khetala to find the woman who had been Aeris of Rebena in her previous life.

Searching for anything else she thought that Aeris would need in order to brave Mount Kilanda, Khetala happened upon a fragment of crystal roughly the same size as the one attached to the chalice, a fragment that she had picked up in Conall Curach. That would protect Aeris from the miasma…and she would need gil to buy provisions and later to pay the boatman's fee. So Khetala counted out six one-hundred-gil coins and four fifty-gil coins from her share of the caravan's savings and tucked them into a small leather pouch.

She would leave the letter and the gil for Aeris when the Tipa caravan left Marr's Pass, Khetala decided, and the sword and shield would follow shortly thereafter. At length she finally left the wagon and made her way to rejoin her fellow caravanners for breakfast—but as she did, she thought back to the pink ribbon.

David had first spotted the ribbon woven into the scrollwork below a switch at Rebena Te Ra on which Khetala had needed to cast a spell in order to open a mystical barrier. Before she did so, however, Khetala had pressed her hands to the barrier in the hopes of learning something, and there a voice had told her: _"This mortal is of bleeding soul, wounded as by swords of suffering, that the Demon may compel her to fear good Mio's will…"_ Khetala was now certain of her conviction that Aeris of Marr's Pass had, in her previous life, been Aeris of Rebena. What had been Raem's plan, when he sent three of the very worst of his minions—the monsters that walked as men—to attack Aeris seven years ago? Did he mean to deny the Clavat woman her birthright somehow? Did he intend to use her pain to bolster his power? Khetala shuddered at the thought—what would a memory _that _painful do for the demon that thrived on pain and suffering? She could only pray that Aeris succeeded in releasing the nameless fallen angel soon enough, that part of his fight for redemption entailed protecting her against Raem.


	7. Aeris's Question of Faith

**Aeris's Question of Faith**

Aeris of Marr's Pass stood alone on the ferry deck one evening several months following the Tipa caravanners' stay at the inn, looking out on the rolling ocean to the south. Mount Kilanda was only three days away now, two even, if last night's storm was the last one that she faced.

For what must have been the thousandth time since she finally decided to go through with the quest that Khetala of Tipa had lain before her, Aeris shivered in a mixture of anticipation and fear. She had felt a strange lightness of heart at making the decision to go to Kilanda, as of a thousand voices telling her that she had made the right decision. This was the first time she had ever been outside of the crossroads-town (at least, of her own volition), and her first voyage by ship. She would see a myrrh tree with her own eyes, though it was not the object of her search. Any other non-Lilty child of Marr's Pass would give all that he or she owned for the opportunity.

But for all her excitement, a large part of Aeris was terrified. From all that she heard of Mount Kilanda, it was a fire-riddled wasteland home to hordes of terrifying monsters. Khetala had warned her of ahrimans, coeurls, lamias, blazer beetles, ogres, even a monstrous Iron Giant that wielded a great sword. She glanced at the steel-bladed sword and silver-and-red shield emblazoned with a rose that Khetala had ordered the village blacksmith to forge for her. Would they enable her to defend herself well enough to reach the top of the mountain? And what would she do once she found the "fallen sword" buried nearly to its hilt in rock behind the myrrh tree, if she even did find it? Her mother had named her after the Aeris of legend, who had died at a fallen angel's blade—was the legend really true? What if the story was false and there was no buried sword?

"_I know that you will be fearful of what I must ask of you, but it is the will of the good Lady Mio. If you are truly whom I believe you to be, you are the only mortal in this world able to do what must be done,"_ Khetala of Tipa had written in the letter tied with the pink ribbon that now held Aeris's long wavy brown hair back from her delicate face. Lady Mio…_was_ there really a good deity who blessed the four races of mortal beings, and angels who served her? Did guardian angels really protect people unbeknownst to mortal eyes and ears?

Tears sprang to Aeris's green eyes at the thought. She had lost her faith in "the powers of good" a long time ago, when the three monsters that walked as men had stolen her innocence. If she had _had_ a guardian angel protecting her, those hideous creatures never would have come anywhere near her! There were some people in Marr's Pass who whispered that she was the "Clavat without a guardian" after she had been attacked—those who weren't repulsed enough to blame her for her fate. It sounded ominous, especially after what Khetala had written, that the evil memory-devouring demon had a name—Raem—and it was he that all monsters served. If there was really no protective power of good guarding her, Raem would have an almost laughably easy time of coming to take her if he so chose…Aeris sank to her knees, weeping in sheer despairing terror at the prospect.

"Somethin' must be distressin' ye, lass," came the low rough voice of Tristan the ferryman, who now stood beside Aeris—she hadn't realized that he had dropped the anchor into the sea for the night. "Be it this venture o' yourn?" Aeris refused to meet his gaze. "You ain't no caravanner, and Kilanda scares the best of 'em—ye havin' second thoughts?"

Aeris stubbornly fought back her tears. "I have to do this," she spat out with the effort to stand and sheathe her fears. "I have to find the fallen sword—I'm the only one who can."

Tristan started visibly at the mention of the "fallen sword." "Ye a believer in the Queen o' Memories who'd call it a holy quest?" he inquired curiously.

"I don't know," Aeris admitted, still looking out on the southern sea, "I don't know if there really is a good deity like the queen in the fable…too much of me is certain there's not…but they say the memory-eating demon thrives on pain, so I'm really in trouble if I lose hope, aren't I?"

"Gotta have faith in yerself, lass," affirmed Tristan, briefly patting Aeris's arm with his gloved hand, "have faith in the Queen o' Memories, and know I'm prayin' for ye too."

_**A/N:** If you haven't already figured it out (the story-within-a-story of legend), I draw the crossover from **Final Fantasy VII**, and I'd like input from reviewers who know a thing or two about FF7, especially those who notice my apparent "shipping" bent: Have I characterized Aeris properly, all things considered (the twists 4000 years in the future and Mio and Raem's alternating machinations)?_


	8. Breaking the Seal of Oblivion

_**A/N:** In case the Final Fantasy VII fans among you haven't guessed my "shipping" bent here yet, I'll give you a hint: I play upon the belief of a certain faction of fans who believe in the power of a certain flower girl to be the light where there is darkness (if only she'd crossed the path of one who needed her, before it became too late), as will become apparent here. Of course I've had to adapt the roles of both featured FF7 characters to the realm of Crystal Chronicles, but the way I play them remains._

**

* * *

**

**Breaking the Seal of Oblivion**

"Here ye are, pretty lass," Tristan called out to the emerald-eyed Clavat on the deck adjusting her gear as he dropped his anchor at the southern shore of Mount Kilanda, now casting out a net, presumably to go fishing while she searched the mountain. "Kilanda. Ye be on yer guard now—and good luck findin' the legendary sword there!"

"Thanks," murmured Aeris shakily as she tucked her portable crystal, suspended by a narrow leather thong around her neck, under her ruddy red traveling tunic. She had attached to her belt everything that she thought she would need: the steel blade that Khetala had given her in its scabbard, a small provisions-pouch of hardtack and dried meat, a waterbag, and an empty pouch to hold magicites and (she hoped) a plume of phoenix down if she found one. At last she picked up her shield and, with one last farewell to the ferryman, set foot on Kilanda's shore as the sun was beginning to sink into the western sky.

She felt wobbly on her legs at first, setting foot on dry land for the first time after a full ten days at sea. The air was not overly hot on the shore, but it did smell strongly of sulfur, forcibly reminding Aeris of the fever-rooms at the time of the outbreak. Steeling her courage, Aeris forced herself to remember her quest. She cudgeled her brain to remember Khetala's letter: the Yuke woman had mentioned a collection of magicites underneath a stone near the shore. Aeris moved her way westward, turning every stone along the way—until she saw a creature the size of a bobcat, with a large club-like tail, running toward her.

The creature must have been a lava-mu, one of the many different monsters of which Khetala had warned her. It leapt forward and tried to scratch Aeris with its sharp claws, but she dodged, with a cry of frightened surprise, so that the blow glanced off the edge of her shield. Drawing her sword, Aeris swung at her foe, missing twice before catching a whip of the club-like tail against her shield, until she finally crippled the lava-mu with a slash to the foreleg and struck its neck, killing the beast, though she did not fully sever its head.

Panting, Aeris looked down at her slain foe as it dissolved into the miasma. For the first time in her life, she had killed a monster. She felt exaltation at her victory, but at the same time, it humbled her. She had destroyed a dangerous creature, overcome an obstacle, but she still felt foreboding, for she knew that she would face more enemies, many of them more powerful than this one. At last she glanced around, her eyes falling on a stone that had been upset when the lava-mu attacked her. Underneath lay a colorful assortment of stones that Aeris immediately recognized as magicites.

The Clavat gasped in delight at the sight of the magicite stones. Another obstacle overcome, she knew it. There were three of the luminous blue Blizzard magicites, three of the deep purple Thunder, one bright red Fire, two green Cure, a Clear that looked like an orb of cracked ice, and finally a brilliant golden stone that must have been a Life magicite. She could cast almost any spell, Aeris realized, from the magic lore she had researched years ago. The only ones for which she did not have the needed magicite were Fira and Firaga, and Kilanda would be more than hot enough without them the higher Aeris climbed. At length she tucked the magicites into her belt pouch and began climbing.

She had barely made it over one jagged ridge when she heard the sound of wings flapping ahead of her—there was an ahriman with one over-large reddish eye circling several yards ahead. Hadn't Khetala written that ahrimans and other creatures that flew needed to be brought down with a Gravity spell before one could strike them? That must have been the only reason why the Yuke woman had bothered to include a Fire magicite in the collection; Gravity required one to fuse the powers of two dissimilar Fire, Blizzard, or Thunder magicites.

Palming the Fire and a Thunder magicite in her left hand and gripping her sword tightly in her right, Aeris steeled herself for battle again. No sooner had she approached with the hope of ambushing her foe than the ahriman caught sight of her and dove down. "Gravity!" Aeris screamed, pointing her sword at the monster as if to direct the spell. She felt a surge of energy yanking in on itself as the spell jerked the ahriman down to the ground. Seizing her chance with her enemy thus crippled, Aeris leapt forward and hacked off both its wings before splitting it down the center.

But no sooner had the ahriman dissolved into the miasma than a gigantic insect-like monster, drawn by the commotion, scuttled forth and made two swipes at Aeris with claw-like forelegs. The first swipe missed its target, but the second one struck the Clavat hard enough to knock her over onto her back, sending the two magicites flying out of her hand and off in some unknown direction. Aeris tried to stab the oversized insect in its underbelly as it scuttled over her, but the point of her sword barely began to break the tough shell. The insect swayed momentarily, more confused than hurt. Aeris stabbed it again, this time breaking the shell and deeply wounding the creature. As the monster scrambled backward in pain, Aeris quickly rolled away and scrambled toward the tiny purple orb that was her dropped Thunder magicite. "Thunder!" she shouted as soon as she was standing again. Jagged bolts of lightning burst forth, most of them striking the great insect and paralyzing it. With a scream, Aeris swung her sword again, cutting off one foreleg and almost cutting off a middle leg. The insect tried to turn and jab Aeris with the horn-like protuberance where its face should have been, but it overbalanced and fell, and the Clavat half-severed its head.

It took several seconds after the battle for Aeris to realize that some of the blood on her tunic was her own—she was bleeding from a gash on her upper right arm and had several other bruises and scratches. Still panting heavily and taking a longer time of it than she would have liked for pain, she pocketed her Thunder magicite and reached for a Cure. The relieving wave of healing energy that closed her wounds and banished the pain could not have been more welcome.

_What in the world was that creature? _Aeris thought in bewilderment. The insect-like creature was a tougher and meaner enemy than the ahriman and lava-mu combined! Then she remembered from Khetala's letter that it was called a blazer beetle: exceedingly difficult to fight with standard weapons, but vulnerable to all three basic forms of attack magic (fire, lighting, and ice). Aeris regretted not remembering its vulnerability to magic quicker, and not having been able to paralyze it with Thunder sooner.

And where had she dropped her Fire magicite? What if she ran into another ahriman? Then she spotted the red gleam of the Fire magicite beside a large urn just a few yards away from a mini-volcano. A short distance beside the mini-volcano lay a chasm, and a sign.

"_Should you wish to ascend higher, toss the urn into the fire,"_ the sign read. When Aeris did so, the ground began to rumble violently beneath her feet. She started in terror and cowered behind her shield, but when the shaking ceased, she saw that there was now a bridge across the chasm. Beyond it, however, lay another blazer beetle.

"Thunder!" cried Aeris from the bridge as she was nearly across. She aimed true—the blazer beetle was paralyzed. Aeris cast Thunder spells again and again until her enemy's legs would not support it and the beetle dissolved into the miasma.

Wiping sweat from her brow, Aeris opened her waterbag and took a long drink. The air was considerably hotter here than on the shore, and the Clavat fervently hoped that the monsters that she continued to encounter would be few, as fighting them made her weary. Closing her waterbag and replacing it on her belt, Aeris plodded onward, well aware that she could not linger.

Very suddenly and horrifyingly, however, something—a spell?—stopped her in her tracks when she had climbed a good distance upward. Had time suddenly stopped? Aeris recovered from the stasis just in time to fall down as something hard struck her from behind, bruising her left shoulder. The Clavat stumbled up and away from the assailant only to discover that it was a fearsome serpent-like creature with the face of a woman and the pincers of a scorpion—a lamia. Aeris tried casting Thunder on the lamia, but it did not paralyze the enemy as hoped. Retreating further, Aeris frantically threw her Thunder magicite back in her pouch and searched for a Blizzard stone. She found one just in time to dodge the lamia's pincer-grab and tried to freeze the lamia, but the first spell missed its target. The second Blizzard spell froze the lamia in place, however, and Aeris raised her shield, using the force of her body to shove her foe over the edge of a cliff and (she hoped) into the water surrounding the island.

Not only was the air becoming hotter the higher Aeris climbed, the monsters, it seemed, were becoming tougher. She successfully avoided the ogres that roamed the eastern slopes, but going westward to the summit meant tangling with three more ahrimans and a coeurl, and Aeris was unable to escape the fight with the latter without numerous rips in her tunic and claw-scratches beneath them.

Once she had cast Cure on herself to heal the scratches, however, Aeris cringed in fear to realize that she was close to the summit. The myrrh tree—and, by that token, the fallen sword—were closer than ever, but now the monster blocking her path would be nothing less than the terrible Iron Giant. How in the world could she fight such a powerful adversary, when she was already close to fainting in the too-thick heat? Aeris tried to force herself to think, to remember what Khetala told her in the letter. The giant would be too bulky for sword-strikes or shield-slams to affect him. Gravity, Slow, Stop, or Thunder-based spells would do nothing; Aeris would have to cast Blizzard-based spells or Holy. And there would be goblin lackeys to aid the giant…

Hoping against hope, fervently praying to the Lady Mio and any other higher power that might be listening, Aeris at last steeled her courage yet again and rounded the ridge to arrive at the edge of a huge clearing. At the opposite end of the clearing lay the cavern with the myrrh tree safely inside.

However, no Iron Giant awaited Aeris in the midst of the clearing, nor even any goblin lackeys of which Khetala warned. Deeply unnerved at the apparent emptiness, the Clavat held shield and sword ready as she made her way to the myrrh tree, fully prepared to attack at the slightest sign of a monster. Aeris finally breathed a sigh of relief to be able to enter the cavern without being attacked.

The myrrh tree was the most beautiful thing Aeris had ever seen. Its curved fronds glowed in a lovely serene aqua hue, draping gracefully like a mouth curved into a smile, the tree a welcome gleam of life in the smoldering hell-fire.

Once Aeris regained her awareness, however, she felt a blast of heat at her back powerful enough to knock her onto her knees. She was more tired than ever in the midst of the heat; she needed to reach the fallen sword before she ended up dying of heat stroke in this infernal place. With a painful effort to stand and sheathe her steel blade, Aeris trudged forward, searching for the glint of metal in the myrrh tree's glow of which Khetala had told her.

At last she saw it. The resulting surge of joy made Aeris break into a run toward the place where she saw the glint of metal, but she stumbled and fell, her free right hand automatically gripping the handle of the buried sword as she landed on her knees. Running her fingers along the handle and hilt of the sword once she regained her bearings, Aeris finally saw the runes engraved on the blade just below the hilt…they matched Khetala's description exactly.

This was it. This was the fallen sword.

But her task wasn't done—there was still something that she needed to do. Yet what was it?

As if in answer, a voice sounded in Aeris's mind, a female voice that sounded somehow familiar. _"Little did this fallen angel know that the Lady Mio must have intended us to know the Life magicite and its power, for when the miasma swallowed the world it brought with it ghosts, wraiths, nightmares, and many another foul undead creature vanquishable only by Holy magic,"_ the familiar voice stated, _"and we need Life magicite to cast Holy."_

That must be answer. She needed to cast Holy on the sword.

Aeris fumbled in her pouch for a moment before she found the necessary Life stone. She then palmed it and the Fire magicite in her right hand as she gripped the handle of the fallen sword in her left, focusing her will on the sword until the two magicites glowed brightly. "Holy!" she shouted.

A great wave of energy surged through Aeris's body, at once blinding her with white light and making her tremble under its power. She felt the energy surge from her to the sword and at once scrambled to her feet, away from the point of impact. When the light dissipated and Aeris was able to see again, she froze with a gasp at the sight of the figure now standing before her.

His form appeared to be that of a Selkic man, quite tall and muscular, clothed in trousers and boots of black leather. He wore a long black coat with metal pauldrons on his shoulders, open to reveal straps crossed like an "X" over his chest. His face appeared to be finely chiseled, pointed in feature and framed by long shining silver hair that flowed behind him like the wind.

At first glance, Aeris was unsure of whether the being she had just released was an angel or a demon. But his eyes glowed like the fronds of the myrrh tree, green with touches of blue—and one glance into those eyes called up a memory the Clavat was never even aware that she possessed. The memory could never possibly have been from this life—from a previous life, perhaps?—but somehow, _somehow_, she knew his face.

"_Sephiroth."_

* * *

**_The moment of truth! The angels who serve Mio knew that the time was only moments away when the great conflict would rear its ugly head in the mortal realm--but has Aeris done her duty and broken the seal of Oblivion in time to circumvent Raem?_**


	9. Is This Her Grace's Will?

**Is This Her Grace's Will?**

Sephiroth took in the scene that surrounded him with wary glowing eyes. The myrrh tree lay several yards in front of him, and beyond it, the mouth of the cavern where the burning heat of Mount Kilanda intensified as the volcano fumed. His sword, the Masamune (named by the recent crystal caravan after the Old Selkic word for "fallen sword") remained at his feet, most of its length still buried in the rock. But what drew his gaze was the lone young Clavat woman who had scrambled to just a yard away from where the Masamune remained partially buried.

"How do you remember what all the races of mortal beings forgot?" he quietly demanded to know, even as he scrutinized the girl. The girl who now stood too shocked to tremble as she whispered his name, the name no mortal being had spoken for four thousand years. The pale complexion, the delicate cheekbones, nose, and jawline…the emerald-green eyes framed by long lashes and finely arched brows, now wide with awe bordering on fear…the sweat-dampened wavy chestnut hair held back by a length of pink ribbon…the slight, although graceful, feminine figure mostly concealed under a ruddy red traveling tunic… In all the millennia since the creation of the four races of mortals, Sephiroth had only ever known one mortal to bear such a face, such a form.

Aeris of Rebena. The very Clavat whom, for attempting to wield power over the dead by the use of Life magicite, he had killed with his sword all those eons ago. And now she stood here, with a rose-emblazoned silver-and-red shield hanging on her left arm and two magicite stones in her right hand, a Life and a Fire, whose power she had fused to cast Holy in order to release him from his imprisonment. A sword, short and light for its inexperienced wielder, hung at her waist. "I—I don't know how—what made me think it…" the girl admitted in a familiar trembling voice, "if that—if that's even your name…"

"But I know your face," Sephiroth told her then, his glowing green eyes surveying the young Clavat woman with a wary interest. "I see in your features the face of Aeris of Rebena—the four thousand years of my imprisonment have only served to burn her deeper into my memory."

"Well, my name is Aeris, but I was born in Marr's Pass—my mother did name me after the Aeris of the legend…" Aeris began, but stopped with a gasp as she disbelievingly tried to process her realization. "It—it wasn't just a legend!" she breathed. "It's all—it's all true…you…you're the fallen one, the angel without a name…" Aeris could barely utter the words before her emerald eyes rolled back into her head. Sephiroth surged forward to catch her as she fainted.

Aeris's pale skin was clammy to the touch, Sephiroth realized when he lifted a hand to her forehead. Were it not for what shock to the senses made her remember his name, she surely would have collapsed from heatstroke sooner; he had to take Aeris to the cool of Kilanda's shoreline before attempting to bring her back to awareness. Yanking his Masamune from the ground to single-handedly sheathe it and shifting the unconscious Clavat to carry her in his arms, he left the myrrh-tree cavern with all speed and leapt down to Kilanda's western shore.

Aeris woke from her fainting spell to find that she had been carefully propped up on an arrangement of rocks at the shore; the mysterious silver-haired being had removed her worn brown boots in order to cool her feet in the salty seawater. Now, with a flick of two fingers, he summoned a small fountain of water to rise from the sea, filling a large spiral-shaped shell from the fountain. Steadying Aeris with one hand on her shoulder, he offered her the water-filled shell.

"Drink this," he told her. "The water is perfectly fresh. I find it a miracle, though, that you managed to reach the summit and find my sword before your heatstroke took you." Sephiroth watched Aeris carefully as she obediently took the shell and thirstily drained it, searching her for his answers. She was Aeris of Rebena reborn; that much was obvious. Not only did she bear the same appearance now as she did in her previous life, but she had known him before the day he turned on her and killed her four thousand years ago—the Lady Mio had sent him to the mortal realm to deliver a prophecy. This prophecy foretold that a mortal who broke "the seal of Oblivion" would then gain immortality, and serve as a Redeemer of sinners for all eternity. Only one who had seen his face in that life, and who died before his fall, would have been able to give him back his name. And Aeris had done just that.

But why had she braved the hell-fire of Kilanda to release him? Had someone sent her here—if so, was that someone a mortal being, or was it truly the will of Her Grace the Lady Mio? What purpose could Her Grace have in sending this Clavat to him? Sephiroth surveyed Aeris's fragmented thoughts as the girl still tried to reconcile the experience in her mind. Based on instructions in a letter from a Yuke woman named Khetala, he gathered, Aeris had focused her entire will on ascending Mount Kilanda to find "the fallen sword"—the Masamune—without a thought as to what to do when she found the object of her quest. Even imprisoned, Sephiroth had felt Aeris question what to do when she did find the Masamune, felt it in the feel of her fingers on the blade, and he had answered her with his memory of the recent crystal caravan's visit—the voice of a woman who spoke of mortals needing Life magicite to cast Holy. Was that woman Aeris's Yukish acquaintance, for Aeris to trust in that voice and cast Holy as instructed? Why had that spell, Holy, been the spell needed to release him?

Not why, though—Sephiroth knew the answer to his last question. Mortals needed Life magicite to cast Holy; the Lady Mio intended it as the means by which he, the angel who had fallen from Her Grace's favor, would realize the error of his ways. But who was this Khetala, whom Aeris obviously trusted with her fate? Was the Yuke woman, apart from being a crystal caravanner, a messenger of Her Grace to the mortal realm, as her letter to Aeris would make her appear to be? And what of Aeris herself—did she have faith in the Lady Mio and the angels who served Her Grace, that the Clavat would undertake the "quest for the fallen sword" amid the perils of Mount Kilanda? Perhaps that simple question would yield all of the answers that he sought.

"Tell me, Aeris," Sephiroth began to question, moving directly in front of the Clavat and turning her face up toward him with a hand under her jaw and chin, forcing her to meet his penetrating gaze, "do you have faith in Her Grace the Lady Mio?" His low, smooth voice held no malice, no sign that he might react in violence if her answer was not the answer he wished to hear.

Still, somehow, Aeris felt a wave of distress take her, and she tried to shrink away from Sephiroth's hand, but he held her fast. Unbidden, memories flashed into her mind: Khetala's letter, and her word of Raem, the memory-devouring demon whom all monsters served. The whispers of people in Marr's Pass that Aeris was the "Clavat without a guardian" after she was attacked. Her fit of terrified weeping aboard the ferry at the thought of Raem seizing hold of her and her subsequent attempt at sheathing her fears with the knowledge that she was the only mortal who could find the fallen sword. "I don't know how to answer," Aeris answered truthfully, barely able to meet Sephiroth's eyes and grateful that he had then withdrawn his hand from her face, "I don't understand any of what happened…"

"_And because this sword, the Masamune, had the blood of Aeris of Rebena on it when Mio cast it away in this direction, and still bears that bad memory, that must be why the Iron Giant serves the demon Raem…"_ Those were the words of the Clavat man who originally recognized the buried sword. Word of a demon that devoured painful memories, given the name Raem, was also the cause of the turn in thought that frightened the heat-drained girl before him. Aeris feared this demon, as would any mortal; that much was obvious. But why should the question of her faith in the Lady Mio distress the Clavat girl as much as it did? Had something happened to her in this life that made her lose her faith?

Aeris had remembered her fellow Marr's Pass townsfolk rumoring that she was a "Clavat without a guardian" amid some darkness of memory…did she really have no guardian angel protecting her? Was _that_ why Aeris had risked her life in the hell-fire of Kilanda to release Sephiroth from his four-thousand-year imprisonment? To entreat his protection against the demon Raem?

No, she had not done it consciously; she had had no idea what to do when she reached the Masamune. Did the Yuke woman Khetala hope for such an end when she sent Aeris into peril? Or was it the will of Her Grace the Lady Mio, who finally forgave Sephiroth for killing Aeris four thousand years ago and sent her to him in this life, in this manner, as a sign that he was forgiven, or at least able now to fight for redemption?

"Was I really Aeris of Rebena, so long ago?" Aeris finally mumbled, hitherto not daring to give voice to her many questions.

"There can be no doubt of it," Sephiroth answered her, his expression unreadable. "I see her face in yours and I hear her voice when you speak. But you proved that truth to me the moment you released me from my imprisonment—you were the only mortal in the world who could give me back my name."

"_But she'll never gain her birthright, not by you, fallen one!" _sneered a thundering voice from above. Aeris and Sephiroth looked up at once to see a great part-reptilian, part-birdlike winged beast cut through Kilanda's ash and smoke, leering at them with evil black eyes.


	10. She's Beyond Your Power!

**She's Beyond Your Power!**

So he had been too late in flying to Marr's Pass to seize the Clavat girl Aeris and drain the soul from her body, that he might use her painful memory to multiply his power. Raem knew then that she must be on her way to Mount Kilanda—he had to reach Kilanda and overtake Aeris before she managed to reach the summit and the fallen sword that lay buried there. The demon had hoped that the angels who served Lady Mio would once again overlook the Clavat without a guardian when he attacked Alfitaria. Curses! The Lady Mio must have used Khetala of Tipa as a messenger again to give word to Aeris of her task—and Aeris had obviously not completely lost her faith in Mio, as Raem had hoped would happen seven years ago when he sent his minions for her.

Raem cursed inwardly again, his fury doubled to hear the voices from Mount Kilanda's western shoreline. Aeris had reached her goal; she had braved the hell-fire to release Sephiroth from his imprisonment, and now the Selkie-formed fallen angel was questioning the girl, telling her what she needed to know in turn.

"You must be Raem," Sephiroth stated coldly, unsheathing his seven-foot-long blade. "Even imprisoned I knew of your coming."

Aeris now had Sephiroth protecting her—surely the fallen angel would not be anxious to enrage the Lady Mio further by allowing any harm to come to the girl to whom he owed his release. Raem's goal of seizing the Clavat to harvest her painful memory would now be more difficult to realize. No matter…the demon could still laugh in the faces of all of Mio's angels to know that one of their precious prophecies regarding _her_ would never come to fulfillment!

The scene below him proved to be a timely illustration of this point, as Sephiroth protectively laid one hand on Aeris's shoulder—and she shrank away from his touch with a startled gasp. Raem exploded into cruel laughter as he hovered far above. _"Where were the guardian angels when three monsters that walked as men stole the maidenhead of this fair Clavat daughter?"_ he taunted. _"Look at Aeris now! So unable to stand male touch that she flinches in fear from even an angel's caress!"_ At this remark, one glance into Aeris's terrified emerald eyes confirmed the truth of Raem's remark, making Sephiroth's glowing myrrh-like orbs flare with rage. Raem chuckled low in his throat again. _"The girl is beyond your power, Sephiroth, as I'm sure you must know. She released you after four thousand years of hell-fire, and she gave you back your name, but there's still no hope of redemption…for either of you!"_

The last words of this declaration came out in a snarling roar as Raem threw down an explosive blast of spell-lightning aimed directly at Aeris. Sephiroth instantly raised his Masamune to block the attack as Aeris threw her hands over her head with a fearful cry—but suddenly, before the lightning came within a hundred feet of its target, a squawking phoenix-cry sounded and a golden form materialized in the air, deflecting the lightning with one swing of a great war-poleaxe.

The light of the deflected attack faded to reveal the form of a beautiful Lilty woman with glowing myrrh-like eyes, similar to Sephiroth's but a few shades bluer, clad in brilliant golden armor. "Stand down, demon!" the Lilty-formed angel shouted.

"Ardwynna!" Sephiroth called out in surprise.

"No time for explanations—take Aeris and fly!" Ardwynna ordered, swinging her poleaxe at Raem again as the phoenix tried to circle behind the demon. "We'll hold him off as long as we can!"

Wordlessly, Sephiroth sheathed his sword and swept Aeris into his arms again. "Hold on to me," he ordered. Knowing that she had no choice no but to trust the silver-haired being, Aeris obediently wrapped her arms around his neck and laid her head against the heavy pauldron on his shoulder. Sephiroth took off into a run, flying over the sea like a phoenix through miles of open sky. The wind howled around them, chilling Aeris to the bone despite Sephiroth's warmth, but she dared not move in his hold except to shiver, shutting her eyes tightly against the great speed.

Several hours passed before Sephiroth stopped running and Aeris dared open her eyes again. When she did, her new view was that of ruins amid a large expanse, probably those of what had once been a great and prosperous city. "Is this…all there is of Rebena Te Ra now?" she whispered with dismay.

"This 'miasma' that's been threatening the lives of mortals engulfed the world less than a year after I became imprisoned at Mount Kilanda," Sephiroth explained, now bending down to set Aeris on her feet again and unsheathing his Masamune in the event of a monster attack.

Aeris was surprised at how difficult standing and walking was after the journey, all her joints stiff from the hours of stillness and the cold of the wind. "And when the miasma came, people fled Rebena Te Ra and flocked to the crystals for refuge—but so many of them didn't make it," she began to explain numbly as she and the fallen angel ascended the stairs to a great pyramid in the center of the ruined city. "The survivors built villages around the crystals and formed crystal caravans to gather myrrh in order to rejuvenate the crystals every year, to ensure continuing protection against the miasma. And so it's been for thousands of years now…" Aeris trailed off.

At the top of the stairs lay a door that opened for the two as they approached. Aeris hesitated, fully expecting Sephiroth to attack anything that lay beyond the door, but to her surprise, there was nothing in the inner chamber save for two large orbs on pedestals on either side. The orbs glowed with a strange reddish-violet light. "Is it—is it safe in here?" asked Aeris uncertainly.

Sheathing his sword, Sephiroth made a small gesture toward the door behind them, causing it to shut itself once he and Aeris were inside. "Unfortunately, no place in the mortal realm is safe from the demon Raem for very long," he answered with an edge of bitterness in his tone, pulling Aeris down to sit beside him against one wall. "Whatever his motive was in chasing after you, Aeris, he will continue to pursue you—and me, because I'm now protecting you from him—until he catches up to us or until he is destroyed."

What _had _Raem's motive been in pursuing Aeris? Those whispers among the Marr's Pass townsfolk that Aeris was "the Clavat without a guardian" after the soul-crushing attack on her—once Aeris learned of the nature of Raem from her Yukish acquaintance Khetala, she was terrified to think that the demon would come for her in another moment when the angels overlooked her. Yukes were generally the wisest of the four races; Khetala must have sensed the threat. Why else would she get the idea that Aeris should seek a fallen angel's protection against the demon? What might Raem have done, Sephiroth privately questioned, had he found the Clavat before she reached the Masamune at the summit of Kilanda and cast Holy to release him from inside it?

He thought back to how Aeris shrank away from his protective touch and how it made the demon laugh—Raem had then taunted about no angel having "been there" when three rapists had accosted Aeris. Rapists. A form of torturer, and one of the worst at that—and torturers were the only sinners Her Grace despised even more than she hated murderers. It was common knowledge in the mortal realm that pleasurable memories made myrrh that crystal caravans now needed to protect their towns from miasma—but what became of painful memories? Did pain bolster the power of Raem after he sprang up, that he then used his power to turn miasma into monsters? It had to be the answer—Aeris's pain would tremendously bolster the power of a demon that thrived on pain; that was why he had sent those "monsters that walk as men," as mortals called them, to attack the Clavat. The thought made Sephiroth curse inwardly, furious that any being, mortal or immortal, would stoop so low in order to gain power. Aeris must have sensed his anger, for she jerked away from him in fright again.

"_Look at Aeris now! So unable to stand male touch that she flinches in fear from even an angel's caress! The girl is beyond your power…"_ Sephiroth supposed it was because he was indebted to Aeris for his release, but it pained him to see the girl shun his touch the way she did, even as his anger toward Raem festered for being the cause of it. But Raem was wrong; Aeris was not "beyond" the power of an angel, even a fallen one, to heal—Sephiroth was determined of that. He would protect her against Raem until the demon's final destruction, and then he would be the one who soothed Aeris's battered soul.

* * *

_**A/N**: I really hope I've characterized Sephiroth properly (for the most part) so far, all twists and plot elements considered; he's a difficult FF7 character to write from what I gather by reading people's handiwork in that fandom. Take it from me, crossover-fics ain't easy._


	11. A Greater Danger, part I

**A Greater Danger, part I**

Aeris could hardly believe what had happened to her. Khetala's warning about the likelihood of the great demon Raem targeting her had scared her into making the dangerous journey up fiery Mount Kilanda in search of the "fallen sword" of legend. Only by casting Holy on the sword and releasing the fallen angel imprisoned within did she discover that the story was true—the angel's name was Sephiroth, a fact that somehow she was the only mortal alive who knew—and then the sudden appearance of Raem confirmed the truth of Khetala's warning. When Raem attacked, another angel appeared and intercepted the blow—and Sephiroth had then whisked Aeris away to the ruined city of Rebena Te Ra to hide in the pyramid-like building until…whenever Raem caught up to them again? How much longer could she continue to fight when the demon did find them?

"Don't be afraid," Sephiroth spoke in a reassuring tone, reaching for Aeris again and drawing her into his arms. Cold now though she was, however, from the chill of the chamber in her bare feet and the parts of her tunic that were torn, Aeris hesitated. She remembered Raem's words when she shrank from the fallen angel's hand on her shoulder hours earlier: _Look at Aeris now! So unable to stand male touch that she flinches in fear from even an angel's caress!_ It was true; the fearfulness borne of seven years' nightmarish memory surfaced even now, making Aeris shun the offered comfort.

At the same time, however, some self-righteous part of Aeris made her feel ashamed of her fear, chastising her for allowing the demon's words to be true. She glanced up, then, at the fallen angel—so far since she released him from his imprisonment, Sephiroth had shown every sign of wishing to help her, especially since the sudden appearance of Raem; he had given her no reason to distrust him. It had been four thousand years, too, since he had done even something so simple as holding someone in his arms to comfort that person, Aeris reasoned—it wasn't fair of her to shun the comfort of his embrace. "I'm tired of being scared all the time," she ruefully admitted as she eventually relaxed into the arms of her protector.

And she _did_ begin to feel safe with Sephiroth embracing her, Aeris realized. The chill seemed to be leaving the stone-walled room as he started stroking a hand up and down her tunic-clad form, occasionally reaching up to lightly caress the side of her face. She felt surprisingly comfortable in his arms, her head resting on his chest just above where the two straps crossed his heart; the heat of his body soothed her as nothing else had in what seemed like eternity. Even the musty miasmal smell that pervaded all of Rebena dissipated, replaced by a scent of leather and spruce with hints of something else that was at once refreshing and strangely soothing. Soon Aeris felt her eyelids grow heavy; if only she could fall to sleeping amid the warmth…

Something startled Aeris back into wakefulness, however: blinding light that preceded the materializing of a new figure in the sanctum of the chamber. The light gradually faded to reveal the form of a Yukish man robed in deep blue, with a veiled turban covering his face and head in lieu of a metal sallet. His eyes were emerald like Aeris's but glowed with a myrrh-like brilliance.

"Imuardian," Sephiroth stated with a distinct note of irritation as he stood up and likewise lifted Aeris to her feet, the Yukish figure having made a hand-gesture to indicate that both should rise.

Aeris tried to wrack her memory for what she knew at mention of the name. _Imuardian…_he was the angel of the night-wind, one of the Elementals. Lady Mio help them all, was the danger of the demon Raem so great that she, once believed to be the "Clavat without a guardian," was now the focus of all of Mio's angels as they rallied to defend the mortal realm?

"The threat of Raem is indeed formidable, my dear," Imuardian addressed Aeris, as he knew what she had been thinking, "but as much as I regret to frighten you with what I must tell, there is an even greater danger present."

"A greater danger?" Aeris whispered, cringing in fear.

Concern flashed in Imuardian's eyes for the frightened Clavat. "Many of the angels, myself included, have harbored the suspicion," he explained, "that the demon, which only enlightened mortals know by the name Raem, is, in fact, a mere façade—an avatar, if you will, for a traitor among the angels who conspires eventually to overthrow Her Grace the Lady Mio."

"How do you know this?" Sephiroth questioned.

"I watched over the Yuke woman Khetala of Tipa, gifted by my wife with the ability to hear the angelic voices, as she led her crystal caravan through this ruined city of Rebena Te Ra in quest of myrrh five years ago," Imuardian explained. "Khetala told her friends of a prophecy that she had heard—one that was evidently _**not**_ Her Grace's will. The prophecy stated, _'When Oblivion washes the world, Darkness will follow, star fallen from heavens as one who falls from good Mio's grace.'_ All five of the crystal caravanners knew, as did we, that the prophecy had long been fulfilled."

Khetala of Tipa. The very Yuke woman who had sent Aeris on her "quest for the fallen sword" had learned that it had been _foretold_ that darkness would engulf the world. The "darkness" meant the miasma, it seemed fairly safe to assume, Aeris reasoned. But what of this "oblivion" that preceded the dark of the miasma? How had something—or someone—brought it about?

"It would seem an odd coincidence that you should ask such a question," Imuardian stated with a slight edge of amusement, once again reading Aeris's thoughts with a perception that frightened the girl, "as it revolves entirely around the legend mortals tell, of how your previous life ended, four thousand years ago in this very city."

"If I was really Aeris of Rebena—my mother believed in reincarnation, she said that birthmarks are the scars of what happened in one's previous life…" Aeris trailed off, then gasped as she felt a spot just below her heart with one hand, reaching behind her with the other, apparently toward something on her back, "…those _monsters _said I had the marks…" She turned and looked up at Sephiroth. "You were the one, four thousand years ago, the one who gave me these marks." Her emerald eyes, surprisingly, held no accusation when she stated the fact. "For that, the Lady Mio stripped you of your name when she imprisoned you at Mount Kilanda…you said that the miasma followed in less than a year…" Aeris continued to try to reconcile the facts, then gasped in realization again. "That was the 'Oblivion!'" she exclaimed. "Something that Lady Mio made every living soul forget! The 'traitor' Imuardian spoke of…"—she turned to the Yuke-formed angel in question—

"Do you, by any chance, suspect the Dreamweaver Inarius of this treason?" Sephiroth cut Aeris off abruptly with a hand on her arm, now addressing Imuardian in a harsh, bitter tone.

"Inarius?" The questioning tone with which Aeris blurted out the name clearly indicated that she had never heard it in any story or legend.

Imuardian nodded. "No mortal has heard any story surrounding Inarius," he began to explain, "because if he really is the traitor responsible for the miasma and the spawning of monsters, as we suspect, he would prefer to seem unconnected with the destruction."

"You suspect that Inarius's work four thousand years ago, then, was an attempt to discredit me to Her Grace the Lady Mio," Sephiroth stated before Imuardian could continue, "one that obviously succeeded."

"Inarius's trickery runs deeper than any mortal knows, if indeed he is the one who created Raem," Imuardian went on. "After Aeris's previous life ended and the Lady Mio condemned Sephiroth to eternal hell-fire in the crater of Kilanda," he explained, "Inarius left the blessed Nest of Memories to dwell in the mortal realm."

Sardonicism once again flared in Sephiroth's eyes as Imuardian explained things to Aeris. "Naturally, everyone assumed that Inarius left the Nest of Memories to protest my imprisonment," he added bitterly.

"Because the Lady Mio would not relent for one angel's protests," Imuardian continued, "none among the rest searched for any sign of Inarius until a meteor crashed down upon the summit of Mount Vellenge, shattering the Great Crystal and burying the world in miasma that brings pain and death to mortals."

"And then you thought the meteor must've killed Inarius, if killing an angel is even possible?" Aeris questioned.

Imuardian took another breath to continue explaining, but once again Sephiroth interrupted him: "Far from killing the traitor Inarius, it seems safe to assume, the miasma gave him cover, apparently, to form an avatar, the demon a meager handful of mortals know as Raem. Under this façade, he commands the monsters that hinder the progress of those who gather myrrh to preserve the power of the Great Crystal's remaining shards."

"Pain and suffering spawn monsters, just as pleasure begets myrrh," Aeris acknowledged sadly.

Suddenly, though, her mind strayed once again to Raem's taunting words, and back to her own bitterest pain of seven years ago and the words of one of her attackers: _"It's her all right—she's a Clavat, she's got the hair and the shape, the crying voice—even the marks on 'er middle! The Demon's gonna be so pleased, the angels'll never be able to help 'er now!" _How the sheer terror of the memory overwhelmed her—even in the presence of two of Mio's angels—Aeris would likely never understand, but even so, she felt her world wrench out of control and fainted.

_**A/N:** Just for reference regarding the angels who serve the Lady Mio, Queen of Memories: I divide the angels into three job-classes based on their roles in the tales that mortals tell about them: the Elementals, the Dreamweavers, and the Defenders. The **Elementals** (all male with the exception of Shiva, the Ice Elemental, a recurring entity in Final Fantasy games) are obviously the creators of plants and animals and the ones who control the elements--controlling earthquakes, storms, etc. The **Dreamweavers** (all female, with the sole exception of the suspected traitor Inarius) are just that: weavers of dreams and keepers of inspiration--they give song, dance, etc. The **Defenders **(who may be either male or female) are best known as the angels who watch over warriors (like crystal caravanners) and protect towns. Imuardian is an Elemental (he masters the night-wind). His wife Namarié--revealed to be Khetala's guardian--is a Dreamweaver, as is Calliope. Ardwynna is obviously a Defender; prior to his fall from the Lady Mio's good graces, Sephiroth was also a Defender (I might've made him an Elemental, but I don't know if _Final Fantasy VII_ fans have a name for whatever metal his sword, the Masamune, is made of--besides, it fits him, as an illustrious SOLDIER in FF7, better)._


	12. A Greater Danger, part II

**A Greater Danger, part II**

"This would bring me to another question I've been meaning to ask, Imuardian," Sephiroth stated with the same abruptness with which he had just caught Aeris. "Why, seven years ago, did Inarius, or Raem, or whatever name he calls himself, send rapists, of all torturers, to attack this girl who is apparently without a guardian among the angels to protect her? Certainly you would know his motive."

Imuardian gave a soft sigh, his manner becoming even graver than before, as Sephiroth gently lowered Aeris to the ground. "We believe that he had three motives for employing such a vile trick," explained the Yuke-formed angel of the night wind. "I surmise that his first motive had been to cause Aeris to lose her faith in Her Grace the Lady Mio, to show her that the truly was a 'Clavat without a guardian,' as the folk of Marr's Pass insisted."

"He seems to have failed in that motive, if _my_ release is any indication," stated Sephiroth bluntly.

"Like Aeris had stated just before her fit of terror, pain spawns monsters just as pleasure begets myrrh," Imuardian continued, "therefore we in Her Grace's counsel also surmised—and were apparently correct—that the demon later intended to seize hold of Aeris and use the resulting pain in her soul to multiply his power. Had that happened, it is likely that he would have become powerful enough to overthrow and destroy us all."

"Which would have happened if Aeris had not braved Mount Kilanda to release me from my imprisonment, in turn entreating my protection," Sephiroth answered. "But the demon also had yet another motive—'the girl is beyond your power'—what did he mean by that statement, directed at me?"

As if on Imuardian's cue, a third angel materialized in the inner sanctum of the pyramid: she bore the form of a Clavat woman graced with the perfect balance of beauty and power, dressed in shimmering armor that resembled the scales of a silver dragon and carrying a great jeweled scepter that could crush a mountain in her hands. Her eyes glowed like deep ruby Fire magicite, set amid a delicate yet firm face, and she had hair the color of copper, pulled back into an intricate braid. "The Clavat without a guardian has broken the seal of Oblivion," she addressed Sephiroth in a grave tone similar to Imuardian's, "but it's because he knows about me that Raem had a means of denying Aeris her birthright."

"Nerissa was at one time a mortal under the care of the Defender Ardwynna," added Imuardian. "She ascended to immortality, and became herself a Defender, six hundred years after your imprisonment."

"The gift of immortality is not one given lightly to mortals under the Lady Mio's care," Sephiroth told Nerissa matter-of-factly, almost as though challenging her. "How is it that you have earned such a gift?"

Nerissa smiled. "I heard the caravanners from the tiny Tipa village telling my story, and I could not have stated it better myself," said she as she drew a circle in midair with her scepter. In the midst of the circle an image formed of the five motley caravanners from Tipa telling the story of the curse Raem threw down at Nerissa's birth; of how her shield, the Aegis, had come to represent her resolve to be a virgin unto her dying-day—and of how the same resolve slighted Ardwynna by fulfilling Raem's curse and thereby giving the demon what he wanted.

"You seemed to be in something of a dilemma at that moment, Nerissa," Sephiroth observed with something resembling amusement. "Your guardian was unbendably intent on seeing you lose your virginity for the sake of a memory to make into myrrh, but you feared the wrath of the Lady Mio if you had broken your vow."

Nerissa nodded, and in the memory-image before the angels, the Clavat caravanner Lydia went on to tell of Nerissa's answer to the dilemma: that if Nerissa _had_ lost her maidenhead, then her death must never come—so she asked for immortality: 'the seed of eternal life,' as the Lilty Dimo Nor had stated. "The angel who obliged me then was Leoric, keeper of balsam and evergreen," Nerissa explained, "and instead of scattering most of my memories to the myrrh trees when all was done, he formed them into a new myrrh tree, making it grow in the midst of his sacred balsam-grove."

Sephiroth didn't need Nerissa to show the image of the Yuke woman Khetala becoming angry over retelling of the story, then, to realize Raem's third motive for sending rapists to attack Aeris seven years ago. The Lady Mio had intended for him, the fallen one, to fulfill the prophecy of the Redeemer by making love to Aeris in order to immortalize her, as Leoric had done for Nerissa, after she had braved Kilanda's hell-fire to release him from imprisonment. The demon Raem or perhaps his puppet-master, therefore, intended to prevent Aeris's ascension—if intimacy with angels who served Mio was mortal beings' means of gaining immortality, then the demon's motive in sending rapists to attack Aeris was to make her too fearful of the angels' methods to accept the boons that they offered.

Nerissa and Imuardian both saw Sephiroth tense with rage for a moment—but then an idea seemed to cross his mind. "You're wrong, Inarius," the Selkie-formed fallen angel murmured with a smirk, to the surprise of the other two, as he knelt down beside Aeris again and lightly swept one hand over her pale forehead. "Return to your posts, both of you," Sephiroth told Nerissa and Imuardian then, now returning to his former position of sitting and holding Aeris in his arms, "and I'll deal with this demon when he tries to attack again."

"What is your plan?" Nerissa inquired in a low, curious tone.

"You will know soon enough," Sephiroth answered her with an air of pleased confidence, "and Inarius will learn of it the hard way."

**

Aeris woke from her second fainting spell shortly after Nerissa and Imuardian had disappeared, woke in Sephiroth's arms feeling surprisingly comfortable. How long had it been since she had slept so well—or had she even slept at all? The thought jolted her awake. When Sephiroth drew her to him that first time, hadn't the Elemental Imuardian startled her back into awareness with a warning about a traitor among the angels—Inarius? Was Inarius the name of the traitor who created the foul winged beast known as Raem? Aeris was confused.

"That demon will never touch you, my darling," Sephiroth told her, with iron conviction in his tone, but with tender assurance in his look as he turned her face toward his with a firm but gentle hand to meet her eyes. "Not as long as I protect you." He threaded his hand through Aeris's wavy chestnut hair, encouraging her to rest her head on his chest again, and adjusted his other arm slightly to keep her near him, comfortable and safe. This time, Sephiroth was pleased to see, it took far less time for Aeris to relax in his protective embrace. She knew, at last, that she had a guardian-angel protecting her, and even though he was a fallen one who had to fight for redemption, the Clavat girl's faith had finally been restored.


	13. Waiting in the Dark

**Waiting in the Dark**

It could not have been more than four hours ago that Imuardian had appeared with tidings of the situation at hand, of the battle against the demon Raem (who was suspected, in fact, to actually be Inarius under a false façade), when Sephiroth suddenly felt a fierce burning in his blood. So intense, it might have overtaken him, were he not acclimated to the heat from four thousand years of Mount Kilanda's hell-fire. But he knew that it was a sign, a sign of one of his fellow Defenders, most likely Ardwynna, being wounded. He knew that it was only a matter of time before he, too, would need to take up his sword and fight. _Lest I be condemned to another four thousand years of hell for letting further harm befall Aeris,_ he thought angrily, unable to keep back his reproach toward the Lady Mio for begrudging him even now.

Bitter though he had every right to be, however, Sephiroth had to admit that what the good Queen of Memories now wished of him, once the demon was gone, was certainly an appealing alternative to the threatened hell-fire. As he looked down again at the Clavat girl who now slept in his arms, his thoughts began to take a more earthy turn, for he _did_ rather enjoy the soft curves of Aeris's form pressed to him in comforting repose. He admired the way the loose waves of chestnut hair lay along the exposed side of her lovely face; he liked to hear the soft murmurs that she sometimes made in her sleep; he positively relished the way she instinctively clung to him for warmth whenever a cold draft blew through the chamber. The "Clavat without a guardian" had already come a long way, since breaking the seal of Oblivion, toward having enough faith in the Lady Mio to trust an angel who served Her Grace—even a fallen angel who had to fight yet for his redemption.

How hard would it be, Sephiroth wondered, to melt away all of Aeris's fears with tender caresses? To kiss those soft lips of hers until her entire body begged for more of his kisses and touch? To claim her completely as his own, then, and truly make her one with the heavens? For it was exactly what he longed to do to Aeris: stir within her such a burning desire for his touch as to drive away every last tendril of cold fear, so that terror itself would flee in the fear of being burned. Then he would take her. Take her, and by so doing immortalize her.

Somehow or another, Sephiroth found his bitterness toward the Lady Mio for her wrathful condemnation of him four thousand years ago giving way to amusement at Her Grace's sense of humor regarding the methods to her madness. She had held him the ultimate sinner until the day when she sent Aeris to release him from the hell-fire of Kilanda, and had long ago decided that one who redeemed the ultimate sinner—as Aeris had done for Sephiroth in giving him back both name and freedom—deserved the ultimate boon: immortality. When Nerissa had refused to surrender her maidenhead for anything less than "the ultimate boon," the good Queen of Memories had apparently decided (since she only ever _did _decree that a mortal being should gain immortality every few thousand years) that making love to a deserving mortal should be the angels' means of giving such a rarely-bestowed gift. _Her Grace wants her angels to derive the ultimate pleasure from bestowing the ultimate boon,_ thought Sephiroth with a wry amusement.

And Inarius be damned, as the Selkie-formed Defender flattered himself that such would indeed be the fate of the traitorous Dreamweaver who had masterminded the demon Raem. The air seemed to be lightening outside the chamber where Sephiroth currently lay low; he suspected that the Lady Mio was now gathering the remaining miasma in order to form a Hell to whence to banish Inarius and all his evil creations. _She'll make the four thousand years of Kilanda's fire to which she condemned _me_ feel like a mere slap to the wrist to you, Inarius,_ he was certain, _once my fellow Defenders and I bring you down once and for all._

Soon, however, the awareness of Aeris's stirring awake broke through Sephiroth's thoughts of revenge against Inarius. He glimpsed the flutter of her eyelids opening and shifted the girl in his arms so that he could better observe the just-awoken languid expression on her beautiful face. "Did you sleep well?" he asked her, with a pleased note in his low, smooth voice.

Aeris found herself returning the smile that she saw grace his countenance. "Couldn't be better," she sighed. "Thank you. It's the first time in a long time that I've been able to sleep so well—most of the time I wake up in the dark from…" She trailed off, somehow uncertain.

"From what? What kept appearing in your dreams?" Sephiroth questioned, prodding Aeris for an answer.

Aeris seemed unable to reply for a moment, but then she surprised her questioner with the way she suddenly looked straight into his eyes. "It was you," she breathed in realization. "Ever since I met that Yuke woman, Khetala, who told me that I needed to go to Mount Kilanda," she explained, "I kept dreaming of a tall swordsman who had the pointed face of a Selkie, with bright green eyes and long silver hair…" Aeris even reached up now to lightly trace one hand along the side of Sephiroth's pale face as she told him, "The other angels must've been telling me that I had to find you. Was it because…" but she trailed off again as fear returned to her emerald eyes. Clearly she had been about to say, _"because Khetala happened to be right and the demon Raem was going to be coming to cause death and destruction."_

As if a vital point had just crossed his mind, however, Sephiroth shifted his arms to better carry Aeris again as he suddenly stood up. "I'm taking you to another place of refuge, while I can still do so without Inarius detecting our presence," he told the Clavat in answer to her startled cry, at once carrying her out of the pyramid and eventually further northwest of Rebena Te Ra's ruins. He knew not how long it would take for Inarius to trace him and his newly-appointed charge, but Sephiroth was determined to see the shroud of Raem fall before the fight boiled down to him and the traitor.

Frightened again at the speed at which the silver-haired being ran with her in tow, Aeris opened her eyes, after another two hours or so, to find that Sephiroth had taken her to what appeared to be a crater or chasm of some kind, with rocks in every shape tumbled carelessly about. This place was still dark, even as the miasma was already beginning to dissipate, and somehow reeked so strongly of blood and sickness that Aeris futilely tried to cover up the smell of the air with the sleeve of her torn tunic. "This place must've been where the source of the miasma was," she mumbled, this explanation as close to a complaint as she was willing to utter.

"The one who sent you to release me, the Yuke woman Khetala, must have also led a crystal caravan or other band of warriors to cut the miasma off at its source," Sephiroth told Aeris then as he set her down to let her find a semi-comfortable place to sit down and rest, "and in doing so, they drew Inarius out of his hiding place, albeit under the guise of Raem."

"And—Inarius—came after me, because—because I was a 'Clavat without a guardian'—at least, until I reached you?" Aeris questioned, somehow confused. "But—but why? What did—what did the Lady Mio want from me—that Inarius wanted to keep from happening?"

Sephiroth seemed to consider for a moment as he sat down beside Aeris, but then answered in such a way as would not null his attempt to outsmart Inarius: "Because among other things, his motive was to prevent your Ascension."

"My Ascension?" Aeris repeated incredulously. "As in, ascension to immortality? But how could that…"

"As it came to pass, you were the woman to whom Her Grace's prophecy of the Redeemer referred," the silver-haired being replied. "She sent me to foretell, a few short years before my fall from her good graces, that _'she who breaks the seal of Oblivion will gain the immortality of the angels and serve good Mio eternally as Redeemer of sinners.'_ Little did I know, at that time, that the 'seal of Oblivion' referred to the seal that the Queen of Memories cast on _me_ when she stripped me of my name and imprisoned me inside my own sword." His voice was becoming steadily bitterer to recall the Lady Mio's condemnation of him to Kilanda's hell-fire.

Aeris looked down for a moment and then back up. "The name that no-one knew for four thousand years, until I whispered it," she murmured—but then her expression brightened in realization as she continued: "Does that mean that I've broken the seal? That I've—I've redeemed you?"

"Yes and no," Sephiroth answered, some of the bitterness fading. "It is perhaps a sign that the Lady Mio finally forgives my sin that she sent you, Aeris, the mortal I wrongly struck down, to release me from imprisonment at Mount Kilanda. You did as Her Grace willed, so according to the prophecy, I must make you immortal. As you may be able to tell, however, I'm still confined to the mortal realm, unable to return to the Nest of Memories until the Lady Mio returns me that power."

"Or you might've taken me to the Nest of Memories to keep me safe from Inarius?" Aeris ruefully guessed aloud.

Sephiroth chose not to answer to that point, instead continuing: "Unfortunately for us both, I cannot make you immortal until Inarius is neutralized. That's why we're waiting in the dark here, because Inarius's power will weaken if more Defenders hinder his pursuit. When the shroud of Raem falls, I want to be the one who finishes Inarius off once and for all."

"And none of the angels want any more innocents to be hurt, except that traitor," said Aeris with a nod of understanding. "That's why you've taken me so far away." She looked up toward the edge of the great crater, still fearful. "But will it be far enough?" she asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

Instead of answering the whispered question, however, Sephiroth sat down beside Aeris and wrapped one arm around her shoulders, caressing the side of her face with his other hand. "You should sleep, Aeris," he told her, in a soft but commanding tone, like one casting a spell. And his words had precisely such an effect on the young Clavat woman: her eyelids slid closed, her breathing slowed to a deep and even rhythm, and she slumped against the arms that gently lowered her to the ground.

The Selkie-formed fallen angel then focused his energy into warming the rock surrounding Aeris to precisely the right temperature, so that the girl would not catch a chill. He would have liked very much to hold her again as she slept, like he had done in the ruins of Rebena, but he needed, for his own sake as much as hers, to resist such an easy temptation. He really did _not_ need four thousand years to catch up to him—at the absolute least, not until he made Aeris immortal as Lady Mio willed.

_You will not thwart me, Inarius,_ thought Sephiroth with deepest contempt. _This time, _you _will be the one who faces damnation._


	14. Defenders in Pursuit

**Defenders in Pursuit**

How long had it been since the blow that nearly sliced her in pieces like a sausage? Four hours? Five, maybe six? Ardwynna was unable to move from where she lay profusely bleeding, her armor in pieces, on the bank of Kilanda's southern shore. She feared not for her life; no angel was even in danger of dying until both wings were severed from the body. It would take three days and nights, however, to heal the wounds that Raem had inflicted upon her (for she could not return to the Nest of Memories in her weakened state); and time was already against the Defenders since Ardwynna's brother, Raoneth, had beaten Raem back at Alfitaria.

"Ardwynna! Her Grace must know that you have been badly wounded," stated a blessedly familiar voice as a column of light materialized in the shape of a proud Liltian man, golden-armored like his sister and bearing an ornate adamantine trident. This figure knelt beside the wounded Ardwynna and removed his helm, as the ever-present phoenix landed to flank her on the other side. "But you and Dominic did your duty well, for the demon Raem is fleeing even as he seeks to bolster his power."

"Raoneth," Ardwynna panted feebly, "what news—what news of the demon's path?"

Raoneth let out a relieved sigh, grateful at least that he did not have to report of the demon gaining on his prey. "Raem has gone to the north-west, back in the direction of Rebena in pursuit of Sephiroth and Aeris," he reported, "before Oberon intercepted him over the waters north of Leuda. The Elemental Pontus is gathering his storm-currents to assist Oberon, and his wife, Serenthia, has rushed to shield Leuda's caravan in both your absence and Oberon's."

"And Ullemarc…and Nerissa…and Théodred…and Dunethain…they will have all flocked to defend either their towns or their caravans," Ardwynna added with great effort. "Let me rest…go to Fum…in case Nerissa must intercept Raem…" But the effort of speaking had taken too much of Ardwynna's energy in her grievously wounded state; she lapsed into unconsciousness, and Dominic, her lover who had been turned into a phoenix, bent forward to spread his wings protectively over Ardwynna's wounded body.

"Very well," Raoneth conceded as he stood up and put his helmet back on. "Ifrit!" he called aloud. When the Elemental materialized to answer, bearing a mostly Liltian form but covered entirely in hot dancing red and orange flames save for blue fire where his eyes would have been, the Defender wasted no time in giving his orders: "We need an eruption. Burn all monsters that still roam this volcano, that Her Grace the Lady Mio may gather all miasma that remains. Fear not for Ardwynna; Dominic will protect her."

Ifrit's coat of flames flared bright white in obeisance before he streaked upward to Kilanda's fiery crater. Within seconds the volcano started rumbling violently and the air grew considerably hotter in the threat of eruption. Satisfied that his orders were carried out, Raoneth flew in the direction of the Fields of Fum to fight beside his fellow Defender Nerissa.


	15. A Defender's Diversion, a Mortal's Doubt

**A Defender's Diversion, a Mortal's Doubt**

If the sudden flare of warning when Ardwynna was wounded had been strong in Rebena, now the burning was three times as fierce—and this time, not only did Sephiroth feel it in his own blood, but Aeris felt it too. The sleep spell cast over her shattered in an instant; Aeris woke as suddenly as though a bucket of cold water had been thrown upon her. She sat bolt upright, pressing one hand to her chest to still the sudden pounding of her heart and hastily rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with the other. Once she had regained her bearings and risen to her bare feet, she caught the distinctive flash of Sephiroth's long silver hair just beyond the edge of the crater and climbed up to a place some yards away from where he stood, Masamune in hand, vigilant eye upon the horizon.

"The enemy is moving," Sephiroth stated when he felt Aeris's presence above the crater's opening, his only acknowledgement either of the warning that he had felt or the fact that the same warning had woken the girl from her sleep.

"He must be awfully close," Aeris tentatively acknowledged, taking a few steps forward. "You cast a spell on me to put me to sleep, but the spell broke because the danger is far too strong." A few more steps forward, and she turned around to face her protector. "Sephiroth?"

Damn. Not that this mortal Clavat could have remained ignorant of what concerned her in the plots, discords, and other affairs of Mio's angels after fear of the demon Raem had chased her up Mount Kilanda in the hope of finding protection, but she was right—the danger surrounding her was far too strong. She knew, and because she knew, she was afraid. As much as Aeris feared Inarius and his avatar, however, she did not entirely trust Sephiroth either; she continued to stand just out of range of his sword. This was not conducive to the will of Lady Mio. If Aeris was to ascend to immortality and be welcomed among Mio's angels, she had to trust the angel who would bring her Ascension about—she had to open up entirely to Sephiroth, willingly and without fear.

He would have to indulge her some more, then, in order to put her at her ease. Sheathing his sword, he approached Aeris again and cordially held out a hand when he stopped within arm's length of her. "Come take a walk with me," he bade her, "for I know of a stream where you can wash away the Kilanda ash if you like."

Come to think of it, Aeris thought, she _was _feeling dirty from having slept such a long time in her ragged, soot-stained traveling clothes. Washing in a stream didn't seem like the smartest thing to do knowing that battle was drawing ever nearer, but since Sephiroth was offering, she might as well take him up on the offer.

The journey down the mountain seemed long, but perhaps it was only because in several places where Sephiroth made his way with effortless ease, Aeris hesitated due to her bare feet and the sharpness of the rocks. But at last they reached a fast-flowing creek about five or six yards wide. "It's just what I needed; thank you," said Aeris with a smile as she knelt at the bank and splashed the cold water on her sweat-stained face once she had rubbed her hands clean.

Soon the sound of more splashing distracted the young woman, however, and she looked up to see that Sephiroth had taken off his heavy-pauldroned black coat and was now wading into the water in his trousers and boots. She turned away after a moment, embarrassed to realize that he could probably feel her gaze even if he didn't turn and see her observing his powerful well-built form, when the sound of his voice only made her blush deeper. "Will you not come to me now?" he invited.

The Clavat hesitated, disbelieving and indecisive, unable to look at the silver-haired being as a frightening thought struck her. Never mind that Aeris had always been afraid to approach any mortal man in any state of undress, let alone an immortal angel. It didn't seem possible, didn't seem right, that any of Mio's angels could pretend to be unconcerned with the fact that the traitor Inarius was in hot pursuit, and battle was imminent—especially if the angel in question was a Defender. Or was Sephiroth trying to distract Aeris from precisely that fact? What motive could a Defender have for attempting to divert a mortal when both he and his charge were entirely too aware of the imminence of battle?

_There you go again,_ another part of Aeris's mind told her, _you get in your own way all too often by over-thinking everything,_ and it was true. She had long been the type of Clavat who kept letting herself be held back by her own fears, and she was tired of being scared all the time; she had herself admitted as much in Rebena. Aeris gave in at last and, stripping down to the knee-length chemise that she wore under her traveling tunic (also ragged from her fights at Kilanda), waded toward the Selkie-formed angel who beckoned her.

The water was cold as Aeris first dipped her feet into the shallows, but it mysteriously became warmer the closer she came to where Sephiroth was standing, until she was within arm's length of him again and the water's temperature seemed to remind her of a summer swimming-hole back home where she would play as a child. Feeling relieved at the relative warmth, she untied the pink ribbon from her long chestnut hair and wound it about her wrist so that she could dive in and rinse the Kilanda soot out of her hair, letting the stream carry the dirt away.

As Aeris emerged from beneath the water then, she felt subtly warmer for a moment before Sephiroth wrapped an arm around her and drew her toward him, bringing his other hand up to smooth the wet hair away from her delicate blushing face. "It feels much better to be clean, doesn't it?" he asked benignly as he gazed into her wide green eyes. "Not that rags and Kilanda ash could have hidden your beauty…"

Aeris knew not how to respond. Even through her soaked chemise she felt as though the touch of the angel's large sword-callused hand upon the small of her back, the powerful arm wound around her, would brand its impression into her body—and it was nothing compared to the feel of the other hand now caressing her face. And yet she could not draw back from him; she could not even find it in herself to want to draw away. He lowered his head toward hers then as he tilted her face up to meet him, and the feel of heated breath on her face was the only indication of his intent before he captured her lips with his own in a soft, lingering kiss.

Pleasure. It was the only thing that came to Aeris's mind as Sephiroth was kissing her. His lips were surprisingly soft, with a unique flavor upon them like nothing she had ever tasted, and she found herself responding in ways that she could never have expected. She moaned into the kiss and instinctively lifted both arms up, wrapping her left arm around the angel's neck and tracing her right hand along the left side of his face, this time with the subtlest degree more surety in her touch than before. What surprised Aeris more than her own responses, however, was the fact that Sephiroth seemed to enjoy the feel of her hands upon him, hungrily deepening the kiss when her fingers brushed a sensitive place just below his ear on their way to thread through his long silvery hair. It was amazing, she thought, that something that looked like liquid metal could feel as light as wind. Meanwhile she felt his hands moving along her back, his arms pulling her tighter to him as his tongue coaxed her lips apart. Aeris inhaled sharply at the feel of his tongue sliding between her parted lips—and lost herself in the pleasure anew. The leather-and-spruce scent with which Sephiroth had comforted Aeris earlier surrounded the girl again, but now it took on a new quality—somehow muskier. Headier. Emboldened, she kissed him with more fervor, venturing now to run her tongue along his lower lip as one of her hands slid around a broad shoulder to explore his muscled back. She found herself getting aroused by his kisses and caresses; she found herself wanting more.

Yet the realization jerked Aeris back to reality, causing her to tear her mouth away from Sephiroth's distracting kisses and even to snatch her hands away as if they had been burned. Hadn't she been afraid, her whole life, to let any man caress her the way this fallen angel was doing now? Hadn't she always been wary of what any man wanted who would kiss and fondle her so, where he hoped that his kisses and sweet words would lead? Surely she wasn't supposed to actually _desire_ such amorous attentions—unless perhaps it was Mio's will all along—was that what the prophecy had said? That since she, Aeris, had broken the seal of Oblivion surrounding the "fallen sword" at Kilanda, Sephiroth now had to make her immortal in the same way the forest-Elemental Leoric had done for Nerissa?

Aeris knew it a sacrilege to deny the will of Lady Mio, but nor could she be intimate with any man, or even an immortal angel, to the degree of truly becoming one with the heavens—could she? And what of Sephiroth—was this, to bestow "the ultimate boon" upon Aeris in exactly this manner, his true desire? The Clavat shivered as the wind picked up momentum around the stream, feeling its chill now that the angel had since let his arms slide away from her fear-tensed form. _Or does he only want me so much now because it's been thousands of years since the last time he made love with any woman, mortal or otherwise? _Aeris thought miserably, now slowly making her way back to shore, trying to busy herself with dabbing the soot and ash out of her discarded tunic so that Sephiroth would not see her eyes fill with tears.

"Don't shed a tear, Aeris, don't be afraid," the angel was saying now, his tone calm and soothing despite his frustration over the girl's sudden fear, as he followed her to shore. "It should not be a painful thing to do the Lady Mio's will. I would not see you suffer so much fear and doubt…"—and here he carefully lifted Aeris up to carry her to a fallen tree, sitting down with her in his lap again—"over a thing that should bring only pleasure." As he spoke, Sephiroth gently grasped one of Aeris's small shaking hands, lifting it to press a kiss into her palm. "Let me make it so. Let me melt away all your fears." He lowered the girl's hand to her lap and brought his own hand up to thread his fingers through her wet hair, kissing the side of her face from temple to cheek, pulling back just a little in order to catch the tears that clung to Aeris's long dark lashes upon the tips of his long, elegant fingers. When she leaned into the feel of his knuckles lightly brushing her cheek, he kissed her again, making his way back to lips still reddened from his earlier kissing, indulging her with slow, thorough caresses of his skilled lips and random flickers of his tongue.

Sephiroth was pleased to feel the tension in Aeris's body melt away as he caressed her and even more so to feel her shift and squirm to get closer to him; to see the fear vanish from her emerald eyes, replaced with desire once again; to hear her moan into the kiss and gasp when his wandering hands found a sensitive place that she hadn't even known existed. This was good; Aeris, of all women, needed to know what kind of rapture Sephiroth could give her, that he was more than willing to bestow upon her the ultimate pleasure as well as the ultimate boon.

"_Yet try as you might, Aeris, to win the ultimate boon—and want as you do, Sephiroth, to give it to her—you both know that Mio's will may never be done!"_ sneered a booming voice from the open ground behind Sephiroth. Looking past her protector's shoulder, Aeris could see that the voice belonged to an only-too-familiar winged beast that had landed on the ridge. But though she had not seen the true face, Aeris knew that this demon could only be—


End file.
